


a wing & a prayer

by sterlingsparrow



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Wings, Canon Era, Kissing, M/M, Miscommunication, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slow Burn, Suicide Attempt, Wingfic, because javert, wings are delicate things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2021-02-07 22:50:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21465826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sterlingsparrow/pseuds/sterlingsparrow
Summary: For centuries, it’s been said that your wings reflect your person, and such beliefs are still strongly upheld despite having little basis in fact. It is said that crow features belong to the untrustworthy, or to people who will only bring sorrow; mourning doves mean one is kind, yet always unfortunate; those with sparrow are born among people of the street and rarely rise above their station.Javert’s wings are that of a crow.
Relationships: Javert/Jean Valjean, Père Fauchelevent & Jean Valjean
Comments: 33
Kudos: 187





	1. a freed falcon

Monsieur Madeleine’s wings are that of a falcon, pale and striped and built for speed. As it is, he keeps them carefully folded against his back at all times. It is unseemly for a gentleman to spread his wings in public; that sort of thing is reserved for close company, if at all. Madeleine keeps no company, close or otherwise, so he spreads his wings for no one. Occasionally he will stretch them to stave off atrophy, but he does not spread them, let alone fly.

In truth, it is more out of habit than anything else. When he goes on his walks, it is not unusual for the man to pause and look up at the sky, remembering his youth. Some days his sister could barely get him to land to eat his supper.

Madeleine does not expect to become mayor, nor does he want to. When he does rise to the station, it is hesitantly, but Monsieur Madeleine becomes Monsieur le maire anyway.

In the early morning of his first day in office, he spends far more time in the mirror than is his custom. It is difficult to see his wings, which lay so still on his back, but he manages it.

Madeleine first tries to use a ribbon around his wings’ coverts to tie them together, as is the custom of magistrates. The limbs twitch his touch, however, and he cringes: his muscles remember better than he does that a convict’s wings are chained in the same spot. He attempts to tie them at the base, and then the joint. His wings reject both. By the time he has finished the feathers are more ruffled than when he began.

He resolves to try again the next day. Madeleine supposes that his wings will lie flat without bindings, but he tugs his coat over them all the same. They flutter helplessly, trapped beneath the fabric.

The day is filled with appointments, which are to be expected. Madeleine finds himself on edge despite the knowledge. He keeps his coat pulled over his wings until about one in the afternoon, when the man he is currently meeting with inquires as to their wellbeing.

“It cannot help to have them stifled under there, Monsieur le maire,” the man says kindly. “You ought to let your wings breathe.”

Madeleine nods reluctantly. “A moment,” he says, and guides his wings through the slits in the coat, designed to allow one’s wings freedom. He feels his feathers ruffle, the wings spreading for a moment in their newfound liberty. Madeleine looks at his desk, embarrassed, but the man smiles slightly and excuses such impropriety. It is perfectly natural for wings to flutter after being bound, after all, and it only lasted a moment.

He stretches his wings again after the man leaves. Madeleine is already regretting the morning’s decision, an ache beginning to settle into his wing bones. It lasts the rest of the day.

When the time nears six o’clock, the secretary peers into the office for the final time. “Your last appointment, Monsieur le maire.”

“Send them in,” Madeleine rumbles, exhausted both from speaking with so many people and from the stress on his wings. He cannot believe how foolish he was to trap them so.

Though it is improper, he settles his elbows on the desk and then settles his head in his hands. He will remove himself from the position when the appointment begins, of course; he would not want to be so informal, and on his first day in office!

When the man walks through the door, however, Madeleine does not need to convince himself to rise from the desk. He does it instantly, startling for a moment before he regains his composure.

Inspector Javert stares at him for a moment but says nothing, simply stands in front of the desk. He removes his hat.

“Inspector, please.” Madeleine gestures to the seat just beside the man. “Be seated.”

“My visit will be short, Monsieur le maire. It is unnecessary,” Javert says stiffly.

“I insist. Sit.”

Javert looks at him coolly. He does as he has been told, however, settling his walking cane against the chair and placing his hat in his lap. Madeleine does not miss how he takes the time to tuck his wings over the chair’s back, a task made difficult by the binding he wears.

In all honesty, he hadn’t been able to place the inspector’s face when Javert first arrived in Montreuil-sur-Mer. There had been a glimmer of familiarity, yes, but Madeleine avoided the police and they saw little of each other. He could hardly say whether he’d known the man before. Only during the affair with the cart did he realize, after Javert made it plain he’d known—or at least known of—Jean le Cric. Madeleine has taken strides to avoid him ever since then, the threat of the bagne hanging over him whenever he speaks to Javert.

And now, Madeleine realizes with horror, they shall see each other often. They will have to work together as the mayor and the police inspector, will they not?

He never should have agreed to this post.

“I will make this short, Monsieur le maire.” Javert’s voice cuts through his thoughts like a knife’s edge. “I’m sure you’ve had a long day, and I would not wish to make it longer. I am here at such a late hour only because I prefer to take no time away from work.”

Madeleine schools his expression into pleasantness. “Of course, Inspector. Your job is a necessary one.”

Javert dips his head in acknowledgment. He takes the walking cane in his hands absentmindedly, rubbing his gloved fingers over the head.

“I merely wanted to acknowledge that we will be meeting often,” he begins. “Your predecessor asked for weekly reports on the activities of the police, and I shall continue this arrangement if it pleases you, monsieur. You may decrease or increase their frequency however you like.”

“Once weekly sounds fine.”

“I am glad to hear it suits you.” Javert does in fact seem relieved, the tightness of his face having relaxed slightly. His right thumb slides along the head of his cane. “I would like to personally assure you, Monsieur le maire, that the police have been striving to do our best in this town. We will continue to do so. If I fail in my duty, you have every right to dismiss me.” For a single moment, he flashes a terrible smile. “And of course, if you ever find that any of my men have neglected their posts, take it up with me and I shall do what is seen fit.”

Madeleine gives a slight nod. “I will, Inspector,” he says, though it feels more like a lie than anything else. He very much doubts that any of the police will slip in their duties under Javert’s watchful eye, let alone Javert himself.

“Are there any matters you wish to discuss with me?”

“Not that I am aware of, no.”

“Then I will take my leave.” Javert pauses. “If it pleases you, Monsieur le maire. I should not wish to keep you any longer than I must.”

“Of course, Javert. You are dismissed.”

The man gives a stiff nod. He pulls his wings from behind the chair’s back, then rises, the walking cane clacking against the floor. Javert is nearly at the door when a thought hits Madeleine, and he calls for the man to stop.

“What is it, monsieur?” Javert asks, turning.

“It is only…” Madeleine pauses. “I wondered what kind your wings are, Inspector. They are quite interesting.”

Javert’s hand flexes on his cane. “A crow’s, Monsieur le maire.”

With that, he opens the door and leaves. It slams shut behind him, though Madeleine doubts it was intentional.

A crow’s. He has seen the kind before, but only in Toulon, where men’s wings were ragged and pitiful, often bearing bald patches where the chains had cut. Javert’s, on the other hand, are made of thick, glossy black feathers. One could hardly think the two were the same.

It is strange that a police inspector would have the same wings as convicts. Perhaps, Madeleine reflects, one of his parents had been a criminal. Or a parent’s parent. Certain strains of wings can run in families but lie dormant for generations, which is about all Madeleine knows of the biology of wings. Javert cannot be a criminal, what with the pride he puts in his duty.

Madeleine leans forward over his desk and buries his head in his hands. On his back, his wings spread and flutter. There is no one here to witness it, so he does not stop it.

He contemplates Javert’s sharp gaze, the suspicion he casts upon everyone about him. Perhaps the man should have been born with a hawk’s wings, instead.

It is surprisingly easy to avoid Javert. Madeleine has always been withdrawn, so keeping to himself is hardly suspicious, and Javert seems satisfied with giving a weekly report. They rarely run into each other outside of the occasion. When they do, it is usually because Madeleine has been giving alms in the worst part of town while Javert has been patrolling, and they simply nod to each other before continuing on their separate ways. Even so, Madeleine has the unshakeable sense that Javert watches him walk away with each meeting. His wings will twitch, the hair will rise on the back of his neck, but when he turns the inspector has vanished around the corner.

He cannot deny that Javert must be suspicious of him. He made no effort to conceal his wings when he first came to Montreuil-sur-Mer, and to do so when Javert took up his post would have been highly suspicious. From time to time Madeleine has the awful feeling that it is only a matter of time before Javert denounces him as Jean Valjean—it is too much of a coincidence for two men to have such strength and the wings of a falcon. If it did not pain him so Madeleine would wear his wings beneath his coat, or bind them as he should.

That is another nail in his coffin, as well. For what cause would a man have to avoid binding his wings, apart from being an ex-convict?

Madeleine spends a few terrible nights trying to wear the bindings. _It is only a ribbon_, he tells himself, _it is hardly a shackle_, but his muscles tremble beneath his touch anyway. He can feel scars when he slides his fingers beneath the feathers. He wonders if there is a discrepancy in their coloring, and the thought makes him worry. He tries the ribbon again, and his wings flutter once more. He gives up in the end.

He is walking on the edge of town one May day when he comes across an open meadow. There are several children running within it, the oldest no more than ten. Fledglings. Madeleine takes a moment to observe their play. They are trying to fly: they run, jump into the air, and flap their wings for a moment or two before tumbling to the ground once more. Madeleine smiles to himself. He can remember a few falcon-winged children doing the same, many years ago. It is not a memory he thinks of often.

“Monsieur! Monsieur le maire!”

The children have spotted him. The tallest, a girl with red braids and swallow’s wings, comes running up to him. She is breathless.

“Do you know how to fly, monsieur?” the girl asks, gasping between breaths. There is a wide grin on her face.

Madeleine chuckles. “I haven’t flown in many years, I’m afraid.”

“Do you still know, though?” she presses. She looks rather like his oldest niece, and it sends a pain through his heart. He crouches beside her.

“The little ones, you see how they jump and then open their wings?” Madeleine asks. He points to the other children, who have begun trying to fly again. The girl nods. “It is better to open your wings _as_ you jump, not afterwards. You are able to carry your momentum with you that way.”

“Can you tell me anything else, monsieur?”

He smiles. “It would be better to ask your parents, I’m afraid. Flight differs with every set of wings.”

“Thank you anyways, monsieur!” the girl bursts out, then dashes back to her friends.

Madeleine watches them a little while longer. Children learning to fly is a sight to behold, one he hasn’t witnessed in decades. It is a sweet thing. He notes with a small amount of pride that they have taken his advice into account, and they stay in the air a little longer. It is only a few seconds, yes, but the children land with great grins on their faces because of it.

“Do you find them charming, Monsieur le maire?”

Madeleine startles, both by the suddenness of the voice and its owner. When he turns, it is to find Javert standing beside him, as he suspected.

“Indeed I do, Inspector,” Madeleine replies. “It reminds me of my youth. My sister and I were always running and flying about—you could hardly get us to come down.”

“Did you grow up in the countryside, then?”

“I did,” he says. He does not elaborate.

Javert shifts his hand on his walking cane. “I suppose that is why you do not bind your wings as most gentlemen do. Unless there is another reason, monsieur.”

Madeleine raises an eyebrow. Until now, Javert has not been so brazen in his investigation. He has felt the man’s gaze on his back and caught him studying his wings, and Javert is oddly present whenever Madeleine is needed to perform feats of strength, but he has never directly inquired about his past. For a moment Madeleine wonders what has spurred him to do so.

“You are exactly correct,” he lies. “Even as a young man I often used my wings. They became used to freedom, and they flutter whenever I try to bind them.”

The second bit is not completely a lie. When the irons had first been put on him, his wings were nearly broken from struggling. He was flogged for it, despite the fact that wings have a mind of their own.

Javert has fallen silent, though he does not leave. Madeleine coughs awkwardly.

“Did you fly as a child, Inspector?”

“Me?” Javert’s eyes are still on the children and their fledgling wings. “I lived in the gutter. There would have been no place to fly even if I had wanted to.”

“You have never flown?” Madeleine asks, taken aback. The inspector looks at him coldly.

“Never, monsieur.”

“That is a shame. There is a freedom in flying you cannot find anywhere else,” he murmurs, half to himself. “I wish you had known it.”

“There’s hardly any point now. I’d look like a fool trying to learn; besides, I have no use for it. I once thought of clipping them.”

“_Clipping_ them? Like one does with chickens they do not wish to lose? Javert, you cannot be serious.”

Javert’s brows are drawn. “I am being perfectly serious. I have no wish to fly, and I do not need to. You will argue that I may need to chase a criminal who has taken to the skies, but crows are not renowned as masters of speed. The police employ men with falcon or eagle wings for that.” He squares his shoulders. “There is no use for my own, monsieur.”

Madeleine has no reply for that. He hooks his hands behind his back as he watches the children, his earlier joy replaced with melancholy.

To wish to clip one’s own wings! It is a barbaric practice, although it would not be strange for Javert to know the process. Most of the lifers in the bagne are clipped. It is usually against their will, of course, but someone decided once that as those men would never be free, they would never need their flight again.

Madeleine had witnessed them often. Many seemed broken men, especially those who had just been clipped, their wings trailing after them and wrapped in bandages. The rumor was that some begged for the whole wing to be removed, as it was useless after clipping. He had looked upon them with pity even during his darkest, most resentful days, as most prisoners did.

He cannot imagine Javert in the same state. It worries him slightly that the man talks of clipping his wings in the same dispassionate manner one would when remarking upon the weather, or the progress of a garden. To be so apathetic about one’s own body—it saddens Madeleine, even if it is Javert.

“What brings you this way, Monsieur le maire?” he hears Javert ask. He forces a smile.

“I have merely been out walking. It brings me peace. And you, Inspector? I do not believe there is much crime to be found in the meadows.”

Javert makes a face. “There is not,” he says dryly. “The widow Bisset is convinced that robbers got into her shed last night. She came first thing this morning and said she would’ve come down in the night if she’d not been afraid they would harm her.”

“Good Lord,” Madeleine says, alarmed. “Why did you even stop to talk to me?”

“Because this is the third time this month that “robbers” have entered her cellar, monsieur. It is more likely to be some animal, as it was the first two times. I tell her she ought to move into town where she will be safer, but she never listens.”

He sighs. “Even so, Javert. The widow will feel safer once you have come.”

“Indeed she will.” Javert takes his cane in hand once more. “Farewell, Monsieur le maire. I shall deliver my report on Friday at the usual time.”

“Farewell, Inspector.”

For once, he is the one watching Javert go and not the other way around.

_“I once thought of clipping them.”_

The words haunt Madeleine for days after. Even when he is no longer so worried, they still trouble him from time to time. Does Javert not remember the lifers who were clipped? Or did he turn to a blind eye to their anguish?

He cannot believe Javert spoke of harming himself so carelessly. What perhaps troubles Madeleine the most is the idea that if Javert is so apathetic about clipping his wings, he may be apathetic about other injuries that would do far worse.

A few weeks after their conversation at the meadow, Madeleine visits the station house at a time when he knows Javert will not be present. He finds the most senior officer he can and tells him, very quietly, to keep an eye on the inspector and make sure he is not too reckless. The officer nods his agreement.

He wakes from the nightmare with a cry, wings flapping against his back in a panic. Madeleine’s heart is beating a mark on the inside of his ribs.

It takes a long time for him to steady his breathing. He doesn’t leave the bed until he does. When he does rise, the first thing he does is cross the room to the half-full washbasin and plunge his hands into it. Madeleine cups them together, drawing water from the basin, then dumps it over his head.

He leans against the wall with a sigh. The nightmares have plagued him since his release from Toulon, though there is never a pattern to them. All he can remember is that they were worst just after his release: it was nearly every morning that he woke trembling, certain that he would be placed in irons any moment.

They are less frequent now at least. Madeleine draws another handful of water from the basin, though this time he splashes it on his face.

He slides down the wall into a sitting position. The urge to cry bubbles up in his throat, and he bites it back. A whimper escapes his lips even so.

Madeleine can barely remember it. All he knows that it was the whipping this time, not the chains that atrophied his wings. His wings were hurt all the same, still; they would drag almost on the ground afterwards, trailing blood and feathers. He swallows a sob at the memory.

That was what the boy from Faverolles had become: a number. The child that had all but lived in the skies grew up to be a man who wore iron around his ankles and neck and wings, whose wings were nearly broken and spent nineteen years covered in bald patches.

“Not a man,” Madeleine whispers. He rests his forehead on the wall. “I was hardly a man.”

He was a beast, truly. He had been filled with hate, anger; he nearly forgot the sister and her seven children whom he had loved so dearly. He had forgotten love. But who could’ve blamed him? He was Jean Valjean, a tree-pruner, and he had been thrown into a world that was nothing but pain, nothing but chains, binding him to the earth. He was reduced to a number and treated with scorn for nineteen years on end. What man would not become a beast in such a life?

“At least I am not that man anymore,” he murmurs to himself. He slides even further down, his head coming to rest on the soft down of one wing. The other spreads to cover him.

He is Jean Valjean no longer. Jean Valjean grew from ignorant and foolish to hate-filled and violent, and he is neither of those things. He has become Monsieur Madeleine, and he belongs in prison no longer.

_But who is Monsieur Madeleine?_

He doesn’t care to answer the question. He has no answer. He allows himself to fall asleep instead, his head still resting on one wing while the other covers him. He shall have a terrible ache in the morning, but he cannot bring himself to care.

His interactions with Javert continue to be sparse, to the point where weeks will pass and Madeleine sees nothing of the man besides his reports. It relieves him, but he remains wary of the inspector even so. He cannot forget the man’s questions at the meadow—nor can he ignore how Javert will ask after his past every so often. He does it in such a way that if Madeleine were not on edge around the man, he would think nothing of it.

Then comes the incident with Fantine.

He hardly remembers her from the factory. Madeleine can recall seeing her enter the building a few times, perhaps due to the distinctiveness of her wings, as well as the woman who oversaw the factory floor mentioning that she had dismissed a troublesome girl. He thought nothing of it.

To see Fantine in her current state breaks his heart, and the knowledge that Madeleine’s indifference has more or less caused it wounds him even more. The woman is terribly thin, her hair more gray than blonde by now; her mourning dove’s wings hang limp at her back. He makes the decision to send her to the hospital rather than a jail almost instantly.

Javert is furious. Madeleine doesn’t care.

Ensuring Fantine is cared for becomes his priority. If she lives perhaps he can make amends, but if she is to die Madeleine can ensure it is in comfort. As the days pass, he begins to fear that her fate shall be the latter.

“My daughter,” Fantine whispers to him one day. She reaches for his hand. “She is living with awful people… will you bring her to me, monsieur, so I may see her again?”

Madeleine clasps her horribly thin hand. “I will do whatever I can.”

“It… it hurts me that she will see her mother on her deathbed.” Her breathing is too slow. “But I want to see her even more.”

“Why do you say that you are on your deathbed?”

Fantine looks at him, morose. “I have heard the nurses talking. And Sister Simplice visits me every day to talk with me, and she never lies. She is a brave woman, to always tell the truth.”

“Fantine—”

“I only want to see my daughter again, monsieur. To be allowed to look at her face one more time.”

“Of course,” Madeleine says quietly. How can he deny her that?

Fantine closes her eyes. “Will you care for her when I am gone? I do not mind if it is you or someone else, only that she… that she is loved. Simplice has said she would care for her if needed.”

“I will ensure that she is loved. I promise.”

“Thank you.”

She smiles softly, eyes still closed. She could be a corpse if not for the slight rise and fall of her chest. Madeleine shudders.

_What have I done?_

He makes plans to leave for Montfermeil. Madeleine will leave in the morning and stay the night in the inn, then return with Fantine’s child. The woman’s health has taken a downward turn; it is feared she will not last the week.

The worst bit is that Fantine has been slipping into lunacy as she grows sicker. Some days she is perfectly sane, aware that she is soon to die yet somehow calmed by Madeleine and Simplice’s presence and the knowledge her daughter will soon be with her. Other days, she asks after a man she calls Félix and thinks that every child she hears is her beloved Cosette. Madeleine has found himself in a near-constant state of worry.

Currently, he is in his office. It is late in the day, but as he plans to leave for Montfermeil in the morning, he has made the decision to complete anything that will be needed in the two days he is away.

There is a rap on the door, but Madeleine barely looks up. “Enter,” he calls.

The tap of the walking cane on the floor makes his visitor obvious. Javert pauses in front of him, just as he did on Madeleine’s first day as mayor; this time, however, Madeleine takes the time to finish the page he is working on. He is still angry with Javert for the man’s behavior during Fantine’s arrest, though he is loathe to admit it.

“Yes, Inspector?” he asks when he looks up at last. Madeleine freezes.

Javert has the posture of a man affected. His eyes are on the floor, his head tilted downwards; he has his hat under one arm and his truncheon is nowhere to be seen. His wings are drooping. His demeanor is rather like that of a kicked dog.

“What is it, Javert?”

“A serious offense has been committed against a magistrate,” Javert replies, gaze still downcast. “I have come to inform you of it.”

“Who is the offender?”

“Myself.”

Madeleine starts. “And who have you wronged?” he asks, genuinely shocked.

“Yourself, Monsieur le maire.”

Javert has not lifted his eyes from the ground. If he had, perhaps he would notice the storm of emotions that cross Madeleine’s face, although they last only a moment or two. At last, Madeleine tries to speak, but Javert interrupts him.

“I have come to ask to be dismissed, or rather for you to recommend that I be dismissed. You will say that I may resign. But Monsieur le maire, you must understand resignation is an honorable proceeding. I do not deserve to be treated honorably.”

“I do not understand,” Madeleine replies. He is still astonished. “What have you done that is so horrible that you do not deserve honorable treatment? I cannot recall any slight that you have committed against me, let alone something that would call for your dismissal!”

“You must understand, monsieur, that I was furious after our dispute over that woman. I was so angry that I denounced you to the police.”

He laughs. “Denounced me as what?”

“An ex-convict by the name of Jean Valjean.”

The blood drains from Madeleine’s face.

_Ah_.

Javert must have taken his silence as a sign of confusion, for he immediately delves into an explanation. Madeleine’s horror only grows as he continues. At last Javert finishes, and looks up for the first time.

“So you see, Monsieur le maire. I must be dismissed.”

“You deserve nothing of the sort,” Madeleine says, rising. “You exaggerate your offense. You have made a single mistake, Inspector. I know you to be an honorable man, and a fine fit as the head of our police—I insist that you remain at your post.”

“Monsieur le maire—”

“_I insist that you remain at your post_.”

He offers his hand to Javert. The man simply stares at him as though he is a strange sort of animal he has not seen before, and the scrutiny nearly makes Madeleine shiver.

“I cannot do that,” Javert says roughly. “For you to shake hands with a police spy is out of the question. A police spy,” he mutters, more to himself than Madeleine. “When I abused my powers that is all I became.”

He looks down at Madeleine resolutely. “I will continue in my duties until a replacement has been hired. Good day, Monsieur le maire.”

Madeleine watches the man leave. He realizes his hand is still outstretched, and lets it fall. A storm of thoughts has already descended upon his mind, yet he already knows what he must do.

It is remarkable how Champmathieu resembles him. Madeleine has the uncanny feeling that he is looking at himself had he never stolen the bishop’s silver.

By God, even their wings are nearly identical.


	2. more of a lark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for minor (canonical) character death in this chapter. it's not valjean or javert, though, don't worry

His largest regret is never fulfilling his promise to Fantine. The memory of her death haunts him for days afterwards: hands outstretched, eyes wide, her wings spread for a final time. Then she fell back upon her pillows and breathed no more.

It will trouble him for possibly the rest of his life, Valjean is sure.

_Valjean. _For he is hardly Monsieur Madeleine any longer, is he? He is a convict again, and there is little hope that he shall be anything else for the rest of his life. Valjean finds himself weighed down by regret, for he doubts he will ever have the chance to make good upon his promise to Fantine. She is dead, Valjean is returned to prison, and her daughter will remain in the inn.

His one consolation is that his wings remain unclipped. Once he was brought to a holding cell in Montreuil-sur-Mer’s jail, he had asked Javert whether or not they still clipped lifer’s wings. Valjean has a suspicion that Javert only answered him because he addressed the man as _monsieur l’Inspecteur._

“The practice was discontinued in 1815,” Javert replied stiffly. “It is considered barbaric to clip a man’s wings against his will, even if he is a convict.”

With that, he had turned and left, and Valjean was left alone.

His wings did not rage against the irons as they had the first time he was chained. Instead they lay flat against his back, just as resigned as Valjean was. The weight was startling after so many years free, but he would manage it.

For a moment, he had entertained a fantasy of taking to the skies before they could chain him again, but it vanished as soon as it had come. Falcon wings were built for speed, but he hasn’t flown in years. He could hardly outpace the falcon-winged guards employed specifically to hunt down escapees.

He endures the chains, his new brandings and the hard labor. He is even able to endure the jeers from his fellows (_‘he was the mayor of a town! he had everything and now he’s right back here!’_). Valjean retreats to a place deep inside his mind, which he has employed in the past, most often during lashings. He becomes simply an observer. His body does what he is told to do without his controlling it. He does not speak. It is only the possibility that one day, he might escape and find Fantine’s child that keeps his body moving. If he had nothing left to do outside prison, perhaps the force that moves him would give in and allow him todie.

The guards whisper that he is an exemplary prisoner. The convicts mutter that he is bound to become a snitch.

Valjean hears neither.

When he rescues the sailor, he asks for the chains on his wings to be removed as well as the one on his feet, so he may use the wings to his aid. He is unsure whether he can manage it without them.

The sailor is a young man. Terrified. Somewhere in the back of his mind Valjean wonders why he does not simply fly down, or why the guards do not fly to him. Then a wind rips the green cap from his head and he remembers that a storm has been brewing. It is a difficult task to save the sailor’s life.

He does not quite register letting go of the rope, only that he is falling. Valjean tucks his wings behind his back neatly so they do not break when he hits the water. When he does, it is icy cold and snatches him from the deep place he has been trapped in for so long.

_My wings are free._

_ My wings are free and no one can reach me._

He smiles to himself, happy for the first time in months, and swims beneath the docks. Only then does he allow himself to come up for air.

Valjean waits, and watches. He swims into the open when night has fallen, ready to begin again.

The girl he finds in the woods has dirty, bedraggled wings, so ill-kept he cannot even tell what type they are. She has wrapped them around herself but still shivers from the cold, so Valjean curls one of his own light wings around her. Cosette beams up at him.

He finds the Thénardiers appalling, even their children. The two little girls, who have sparrow wings like their father, refuse to let Cosette join their play when it is obvious that is all she wants. The mother berates her until Valjean intervenes. In the morning, when the father comes to discuss Cosette with him, the man has no intention other than to earn money from Valjean. He clearly does not love Cosette.

It is no wonder that the girl is so desperate to be loved.

Even in the light of the inn, Valjean had been unable to discern the sort of wings Cosette had. Mme. Thénardier made a comment about how the villagers called her a lark, but it hardly made any sense, since Fantine had had mourning dove’s wings. He cannot figure it out.

“Do you know what sort of wings you have?” Valjean asks quietly as they walk. Cosette shakes her head, hair falling in her eyes.

“Madame never told me. Other people said that I was more of a lark than a dove, but I didn’t understand.”

He purses his lips. They walk on.

Valjean’s first object is to find a home, then to care for Cosette’s wings. The Gorbeau tenement is easy enough to find. Once they have sorted out their meager belongings, he obtains a washbasin and fills it with soapy water. He carries a grooming comb on his person, of course; the only people who do not are beggars and convicts.

“I am going to take care of your wings tonight,” he tells Cosette gently. The little girl nods. “But from now on you will do it. I will teach you, of course.”

“Tonight?” Cosette asks, scrunching up her face. Valjean considers.

“The next time.” Her wings are so filthy, he doubts he could teach her anything about day-to-day grooming this first time.

It takes all day, lasting into the night. Cosette hasn’t had a proper grooming in years, most likely, and her wings are caked in mud and dust. It is a miracle she was able to lift them. By the time he is finished, Valjean’s hand is aching and the washbasin is filled more with mud than actual water. 

“There,” he says, and Cosette leaps from the bed.

“They’re so _light!_” she exclaims, spinning round. “Oh thank you, Papa—they’re not heavy any more!”

She spreads her wings; in her spinning, she is lifted slightly off the ground, and she laughs as she lands again. Valjean watches with a smile on his face.

“What kind are they?” Cosette asks at last. She turns so that he may examine them, but he need only glance at the wings. The feathers are the soft gray of a mourning dove.

“A mourning dove, my dear. Just like your mother.”

“Am I going to see my mother?”

Valjean flinches. Cosette climbs onto the bed beside him, expecting an answer which he does not want to give.

“No,” he says at last, his voice quiet. Cosette sags against him. “Your mother has—she has passed on. I’m sorry. She loved you very much, Cosette.”

“She must have if she sent you to me.”

“Hm?”

“Mama sent you to take care of me, right? So that you would be my papa?”

He relaxes slightly. “Yes. I’m going to be your papa, and you will never see the Thénardiers again. I promise.”

That at least he can keep. Cosette smiles sleepily.

“Good,” she yawns. Soon Valjean realizes that she has fallen asleep on his shoulder. What’s more, he finds he does not mind.

Out of everything that has happened to him, the last thing Valjean expected was to encounter Fauchelevent again. But here he is, sitting in the man’s cottage with aching wings, and Fauchelevent is right beside him.

“How are your wings, Monsieur Madeleine?” Fauchelevent asks. Valjean winces. “They cannot be fine, after being cramped in that coffin.”

“It is nothing I won’t recover from. Please, Fauchelevent, do not call me Madeleine.” He sighs. “Ultime, perhaps.”

“Yes, I must get into the habit if the sisters will believe us. I’m sorry.”

“It’s no trouble.”

“Are you sure you’re all right?” Fauchelevent asks. His woodpecker’s wings flutter in concern. “You still smell like dirt. And death, though maybe I’m imagining it.”

“A bath would be nice, but I have no way to—”

Fauchelevent rises. “I’ll draw you some water from the well, and I’ll stay outside while you wash. It won’t be warm, but I’m afraid it can’t be helped.”

“That’s all right. Thank you, Fauchelevent.”

The man turns, smiling. “Don’t be thanking me, Mon—Ultime. You are the angel who saved me life; why, if it weren’t for you, neither of us would be here at all!”

“I suppose that’s true,” Valjean replies, a little feebly. He had not considered that fact.

The water was cold, as Fauchelevent had said, but he has washed with cold water all his life, and Valjean only scrubs his wings and chest. The rest of him hardly warrants cleaning. When he is finishes, he rests upon the bed for a moment, eyes unseeing.

The convent is a blessing sent from God, truly. He cannot imagine what would happen with Fauchelevent’s help. Probably he would be on his way back to prison—no, the guillotine was more likely, as he had escaped—and he has no idea what would happen to Cosette. At least Javert would have realized that when Valjean had asked for time to fetch the child, he had spoken honestly.

“Life will be good here,” Valjean promises himself. He pulls an errant feather from a wing.

It _will_ be good here. Cosette will have schooling, and he will get to see her every day, and he will get to garden as he once did, and…

He pulls his shirt back on. “Fauchelevent,” Valjean calls as he slides his wings through their slits, “you can come in again!”

And he will have a friend.

The following years are some of the best Valjean has known in a long time. No one ever comes to the convent, let alone the police, so he is not constantly looking over his shoulder, though he must conceal his identity from Fauchelevent. That is the worst bit, really. Deception, and the deception of a friend at that!

For they are friends. At least, Valjean considers them to be so, and it appears Fauchelevent does as well. They share a cottage and work together, each other’s only companions for the most part. When Cosette visits them (which is often) she calls the man uncle. It is hard to miss the grin on Fauchelevent’s face when she does so.

Cosette herself grows into a splendid girl. She is the very portrait of her mother, apart from their hair. _No_, Valjean reflects, _she is the very portrait of Fantine in good health_. Cosette is always smiling, even when she complains that her schoolwork bores her. She is happy to remain inside the convent, just as Valjean is.

Valjean’s guilt at keeping her here grows despite this. With every day that passes, Cosette becomes more and more of an adult. Yet she knows little else beside the convent. Valjean supposes she was too young to remember anything before the Thénardiers, and she cannot remember them. She has told him that she vaguely remembers a woman with long blonde hair, but that is all. Her first true memory is of him finding her in the woods.

“I cannot keep her here,” he tells Fauchelevent one summer night. “She loves it, and I do as well, but Cosette knows nothing of the world. How can I lock her in a convent for the rest of her life?”

“She is only thirteen. There is still time for you to think on the decision; she won’t be asked to become a sister for years yet,” Fauchelevent replies gently. Valjean manages a smile.

“That’s true.”

For a time, he allows himself not to worry. His days are filled with gardening, something he has always loved, and his daughter and his friend. The convent’s nuns are kind enough to him. It is amusing as well to spy the littlest girls watching him as he tends the plants. Occasionally one will even dare to approach him, and Valjean smiles and speaks a little with her before she runs back to her friends.

It is a good life. He would stay here forever if he could, but Cosette’s freedom hangs heavy in his mind.

In February of Cosette’s fifteenth year, Fauchelevent catches a cough. The cough grows into a cold, the cold grows into a fever, and within a month Fauchelevent is a very sick man. He is bedridden; the nuns excuse Valjean from his duties as a gardener to care for his friend.

“You will get better,” Valjean says through tears. He clasps Fauchelevent’s hand. “You will get better, you _must_ get—”

Fauchelevent places his other hand on Valjean’s shoulder. “Sh, my brother. We both know that is not the truth.”

“I want it to be.”

“As do I,” the man says sadly. “But I’m old, much older than you. Why, I passed my seventy-first birthday in September. I’ve lived a decent life. I don’t like the thought of dying, but I believe I am as all right with it as I could be.”

“A decent life,” Valjean repeats. “You have lived far more than a decent life. You took me and my daughter in when we had nowhere else to go, you have been like a father to her and a brother to me—Fauchelevent, my friend, may I tell you something?”

“Of course.”

He closes his eyes. “My name was… my name was never Madeleine. It was Jean Valjean.”

“Jean Valjean,” Fauchelevent says softly. Valjean hears his wings flutter.

“I-I was a convict in Toulon for nineteen years because I stole bread. I called myself Madeleine only because I couldn’t call myself Valjean. I am so sorry for deceiving you.”

“Look at me, Ultime. Jean, I mean.” The hand on his shoulder moves to his face, brushing away tears, and Valjean opens his eyes reluctantly.

Fauchelevent is smiling.

“I don’t care,” he whispers. He leans forward a little. “I don’t care at _all_. You saved my life, and have been a brother to me in the past years. Whatever you did before you came to Montreuil-sur-Mer hardly matters. You have been good to me, to your daughter. Truly an angel, you are.”

Valjean finds he cannot form a response, as he is crying too much. He shakes, his huge chest heaving with sobs, and Fauchelevent simply smiles sadly at him.

“You are the first person to call me Jean in thirty years,” he chokes out when he can speak again. He lays his head on the mattress, overcome.

“Do you want me to call you Jean?” Fauchelevent asks, his voice thin. Valjean can only nod.

“Jean Valjean.” The hand on his cheek moves from his face to his hair. “You saved me, Jean. I cannot be thankful enough.”

“You saved me too,” Valjean whispers. He closes his eyes.

Why does he find himself beside deathbeds so often?

Fauchelevent is buried in early May of that year. He was sane until the end, thank God; Valjean has no idea what he would’ve done if the man had lost his lucidity as Fantine did.

When Fauchelevent is buried, Valjean kneels before the grave after the last shovelful of dirt is thrown upon it and prays. He remains there until it is almost nightfall.

He stays in the convent for three weeks more, mourning. Soon, however, it becomes unbearable to remain. Whenever Valjean walks the gardens or the chapel, or even when he wakes in the little cottage, his mind is filled with memories of his friend and he is often driven to tears. The nuns are sorry to see him go, especially because they are losing both their gardeners within a few weeks’ span, but they understand his sorrow.

Valjean takes Cosette with him. He tells himself it is because he cannot make her lose both her father and her uncle, but he knows he is lying.

He cannot bear to leave her behind.

Paris is a whirlpool, easy to be lost in, so that is where they go. Both of them still grieve, but Cosette is filled with wonder as they enter the city. Valjean cannot blame her. He, too, is a little awe-struck.

This time, he rents three separate residences so that if he is discovered, he will have somewhere to flee. Cosette’s favorite is the house on Rue Plumet, with its monstrous garden and ornate gate, so that is where they stay most of the time. When they do move between addresses, the housekeeper Toussaint accompanies them. Cosette enjoys her company, and she does not question Valjean’s decisions. He suspects she believes he is simply an eccentric old man. It is better than the truth, so he does not correct her.

He tries to live a simple, ordinary life. Paris is nearly as perfect as the convent. He is inconspicuous, his precautions hiding him from the law, and he is able to relax as much as he can. He misses Fauchelevent, but that cannot be helped. Valjean is friendly to Toussaint and close with Cosette, and that is the best he can do.

He allows himself two pleasures in Paris: the garden and almsgiving.

The garden at Rue Plumet is a monster, left untamed for years, but it conceals the house nicely and Valjean prefers it that way. He tends to it behind the house instead, his wings shielding him from the sun.Cosette adores the garden as well, though she prefers to examine it rather than care for it. A voice in his head that sounds suspiciously like a nun from the convent tells Valjean that she is too old for playacting, but his heart warms at the sight of his daughter so happy. How could he deny her such joy?

The second, giving alms, is something he enjoys, but there is a necessity to it that is absent from gardening. _I have so much_, Valjean reasons. _Why not share it with others?_

Giving alms is, unfortunately, exactly what lands him in trouble.

It is not unusual that Valjean visits people’s homes, nor is it odd for him to bring Cosette along. When a girl about Cosette’s age him to visit her family, he thinks nothing of it at first. It is the middle of winter and the child is not even wearing shoes.

Only when he enters the tenement does he feel something is amiss. The girl’s father calls himself Fabantou, but his and his wife’s faces are oddly familiar. Not only that, but he shares sparrow’s wings with his daughter, while his wife has those of a vulture. Valjean has a terrible feeling he knows who these people truly are.

Fabantou tells him a tale of misery, which for all its gravity is not unlike many Valjean has heard before. He finishes it by beleaguering how he owes his landlord a year’s worth of rent, sixty francs. Valjean places a five-franc piece on the table (it is all he has), and then lays his overcoat on the back of a chair.

“That is all I have at present, monsieur,” he says calmly. “But I’ll take my daughter home and return this evening, if suits you.”

Fabantou beams. “Of course! I must be at my landlord’s at eight, however.”

“Then I’ll come at six.”

He leaves the overcoat with the family. It can do them no harm, seeing how their younger daughter was shivering so.

When Valjean returns, he feels as though he is walking into a wolf’s den. Both of his suspicions are proven correct: Fabantou reveals himself to be Thénardier in a grandiose speech, and he has barely finished speaking before the men in the room lunge for Valjean. He struggles, but it is one against many and he does not succeed.

He has never been more glad for the hollowed-out sou in his pocket. His gladness last only a few moments, however; first he hears the Thénardier couple whispering to each other before they determine to slit his throat, and then there is the scrap of paper from their daughter. Valjean finds himself frozen at the prospect of the police.

Then the man Thénardier is climbing out the window, arguing with his fellows all the while, until a voice shocks everyone in the room into stillness.

“_Voulez-vous mon chapeau_?”

Valjean turns slowly to see Javert standing in the doorway with a terrible grin on his face, his hat offered before him. In the following moments, he watches Javert stare down a group of brigands with a cheerful smile, seemingly will a pistol to misfire, and sidestep a paving stone while making a snide remark. The men surrender themselves to his custody without protest.

“Untie the gentleman,” Javert says, having glanced Valjean’s way at last. Somehow he fails to recognize him. “Though no one shall leave to say so.”

A gendarme makes his way over to Valjean and unties his bonds. He smiles gratefully, rubbing his leg; the officer returns to the prisoners.

As soon as Valjean gets the chance, he moves to the window and jumps.

His wings spread behind him automatically. They are stiff, unused for decades, but Valjean manages to keep himself in the air even so. He spent his childhood flying, and his wings have not forgotten it.

He makes it home to the apartment they are currently staying at, then collapses upon the stoop.

The burn sickens him. He catches fever, though Valjean does not know how. Cosette fusses over him nervously the entire time he is abed. He suspects that the sight of him confined to a sickbed is similar to Fauchelevent’s last days, and Cosette is somewhat afraid that he will die.

She does not mention it, so Valjean cannot reassure her. But he grows strong again to both their reliefs, and resumes his alms-giving. Cosette continues to worry, but Valjean cannot garden during the winter. He has nothing else to occupy his days but books. He wouldn’t mind spending his time reading, but his conscience prickles at him despite it.

He finds he is slipping into the habits he acquired in Montreuil-sur-Mer. Valjean catches himself looking over his shoulder constantly, the feeling that he is being watched following him everywhere. He begins to move Cosette, Toussaint, and himself between their apartments with more regularity than before.

Javert is in Paris. This Valjean had not expected, though he supposes he should have. The man was the officer heading the search that led he and Cosette into the convent; naturally Javert was a member of the city’s police.

He had allowed himself a false sense of security. The years in the convent had dulled his senses, made him forget how cruel the outside world could be. Valjean curses his foolishness. He should have been vigilant in Paris from the very start. Paris is a whirlpool, yes, but it is not without its police. It is not without Javert.

Valjean remains on his toes until the spring, and after that as well. With spring comes his and Cosette’s walks in the Luxembourg Gardens, where he is even more likely to be recognized.

Cosette is amiable as always, drawing him into conversation. Valjean tries to assume her unconcerned air: to the average observer, he is little more than a harmless old man, taking his granddaughter for walks in the gardens. Yet, as always, he cannot help but feel nervous.

Perhaps he was right to be nervous, but for an entirely unexpected reason. Unbeknownst to him, with the Luxembourg Gardens comes a certain young man.

Spring fades into the beginnings of summer. There is a scare outside of the house on Rue Plumet; Valjean moves the household to the apartment at no. 7, Rue de l’Homme Arme. He begins to brew a plan of fleeing to England. He speaks no English, but there he and Cosette will at least be safe.

Then there is a gamin, and a note, and Valjean learns suddenly of the young man from the Luxembourg Gardens. He finds himself on the way to a barricade.


	3. birds of a feather

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tw for javert's (attempted) suicide at the end of this chapter.

He spies wings of all kinds at the barricade, from birds of prey to waterfowl to songbirds. Valjean muses that if so many different men have joined this, it must have some worth, but he cannot shake the sorrow he feels at knowing they will be dead in a day or two. It’s unlikely that any will escape; hell, he has no idea if _he _will manage to escape.

Marius has the wings of an oriole. He knows this, because Cosette had called the boy ‘my oriole’ in her letter, and the information makes his search quite easier than it might have been. Valjean in fact spies him as he climbs over the barricade (a boy with black curls and a nervous expression), but he is pulled away by the leaders before he can speak to Marius.

The one thing he finds that he doesn’t truly expect is Javert.

Were he a man more given to poeticism Valjean would ruminate on the irony of their relationship: always running, always chasing, and it is never long before Javert catches up to him, only for Valjean to escape again. As it is, the most note Valjean makes on the situation is how unlucky he is. And how unlucky Javert is presently, for the man has been lashed to the table. It cannot be comfortable. His wings are beneath his back, the rope crisscrossing his body awkwardly, and from the man’s expression, he has been there a very long time.

“Might I ask for a reward?” Valjean asks, when the time is right. The leader, a blonde man with eagle’s wings, gives a nod.

“Certainly. What is it?”

“That I may blow that man’s brains out.”

He gestures to Javert, the blonde’s eyes following the movement. Javert gives a hoarse little laugh.

“That’s fair,” he says. Valjean sets his jaw. When Javert is removed from the table, he makes no resistance, nor does he when Valjean takes his rope in hand. He walks calmly all the way to his death.

_I once thought of clipping them._

“Your wings cannot be comfortable,” Valjean says quietly as he takes the man into the alley behind the barricade. Javert huffs.

“What do you care? You are about to kill me. As a matter of fact, I don’t care either.” He gestures to the pistol. “I would prefer if you do it faster.”

Valjean sighs and takes out his knife. “I thought you would know me better by now.”

“A knife? That does suit you better.”

_Stupid man_, he wants to say, but refrains from it. Javert’s expression when he cuts the rope from around his throat and hands is an enjoyable one.

“What are you playing at, Valjean?” he demands. Valjean raises his eyebrows, returning the knife to his pocket.

“What do you think I’m playing at? I prefer to see you alive, rather than dead?”

“If you let me go, I shall arrest you. Surely you know that.”

“Of course,” Valjean says softly. “When this is all over, you shall find me at No. 7, Rue de l’Homme Arme. I live under the name Fauchelevent.”

If Javert’s face when Valjean freed him was amusing, it was nothing compared to his expression now. Valjean cannot help but laugh.

“Don’t laugh,” the inspector snaps, closing his mouth. “I don’t like it when people laugh at me.”

“Of course.”  
It’s odd, almost alarming how easily they slip into this… banter. It is something Valjean has rarely experienced. He never spoke this way with Fauchelevent, nor with any of the men on his old chain gang; in fact, the only times he can remember such a thing is when he was a boy in Faverolles and a man in Montreuil-sur-Mer. Faverolles is hazy, and Montreuil-sur-Mer is sad. Valjean pushes away the memories.

“Go,” he says. “Leave now.”

Javert narrows his eyes. “You are supposed to kill me.”

“I might if you don’t leave. Do you value your life or not?”

The man doesn’t answer. Valjean’s stomach churns; he remembers Javert’s unfailing honesty and recklessness with discomfort. Is there a more sinister reason why he was assigned here, and why he went to his death so willingly?

Valjean refuses to dwell on it.

“_Go_,” he implores. He shoves Javert slightly. “You must have some orders to complete. Do your duty, and then come looking for me when this is all over.”

“I will,” Javert murmurs. His voice is eerily calm.

Valjean watches him go. When Javert is at the mouth of the alley, Valjean raises the pistol in the air and shoots.

His next task is to find Marius Pontmercy. It is made rather easy by his wings—in fact, the boy is the only oriole-winged man at the barricade—and his coal-black hair. Yet when Valjean comes upon him, Marius is sitting slumped against the tavern, clothes red. Valjean’s heart pounds in his chest.

Marius _cannot_ be dead. He cannot have come here in vain. If Marius Pontmercy dies tonight, Valjean has the awful feeling that his Cosette will be inconsolable.

He kneels beside the boy quickly, feeling at his neck. There is a pulse—_yes_—and it is not as faint as it could be. Valjean could almost pretend Marius is sleeping if his clothes were not so bloody. Marius needs a doctor, and soon.

But he cannot yet flee the barricade. The leaders will surely spy him dragging Marius away, and no amount of pleading will keep them from believing that he is a spy, and they will plan to execute him too, only there will be no one to save Jean Valjean. No, he must wait until the barricade has nearly fallen, or until it is the depths of night at least. Then Valjean may slip away silently, Marius in tow, and no one will be none the wiser.

He stays beside the boy the whole night through. The other revolutionaries do not bother him, preoccupied as they are, and Valjean is free to worry in peace. From time to time he looks at Marius, feels for the boy’s pulse and breath, and Valjean’s worry only grows: Marius’ heartbeat is growing fainter, his breathing slower with every passing minute.

_Soon._

Suddenly the barricade is falling, a cacophony of screams and gunshots, and in the chaos Valjean grabs Marius and heaves him over his shoulder. Yet he has waited too long: the soldiers are breaking through the barricade but they are at the back too, and he cannot take the path Javert took. Valjean looks around wildly, helpless, and spots the sewer grate.

The stink is suffocating.

He would have greatly, _greatly_ preferred they did not escape by way of Paris’ sewer system, but it cannot be helped. Besides, Valjean has endured worse. He only hopes the smell does not kill Marius before Valjean can get him to a doctor.

Valjean focuses on Marius’ heartbeat, keeping the man’s head above water, and breathing through his mouth.

He does not quite know how to leave, something he only realized after he climbed inside. He’s already had the misfortune of dealing with Thénardier, but the rat of a man slunk off before Valjean even thought of following him, for surely Thénardier knows his way out. He did not look remotely bothered by their surroundings, so Valjean supposes he’s been in here before. Valjean, on the other hand, hopes sincerely that this is his only experience with the sewers.

At long last he spies the light of day ahead of them, or at the very least the fading light of day. It is so very far away, but Valjean’s heart leaps with joy and he struggles towards it with renewed strength, and falls upon the grate with immense relief. It is no trouble to pick the lock, and then all he must do is swing the grate open and drag Marius out behind him. Valjean falls to his knees, coughing; his wings spread and flutter, shaking the muck from their feathers.

He glances round. They are on the bank of the Seine. Valjean struggles to remember where Marius lives until he realizes he does not know, and then he flings open the boy’s coat. There is a notebook in his pocket, and a note in this, detailing where his body ought to be sent. Valjean heaves a sigh.

“You!”

He sits back on his knees, shock and fear and then resignation flitting through him all at once. He _knows_ that voice, dealt with the man only hours ago, and it seems fitting that he ought to catch Valjean just before he can complete this final deed. Valjean’s hands curl on his filthy trousers. He only needs an hour. It is a reasonable request, but when has Javert ever listened to reason? Valjean will be arrested and Marius Pontmercy will die on the banks of the Seine, and his dear Cosette will be stripped of both her father and her beloved forever.

But Javert does not seem to recognize him. “Who are you?” he asks, arms folded, and Valjean stares at him in disbelief.

“I,” he replies simply.

“And who is that?”

“Jean Valjean.”

Javert blinks, then crouches before him and brings their faces close, so close they nearly touch. Valjean allows this, despite the shiver that runs down his spine and through his wings at having his face in Javert’s hands.

“So it is you,” Javert says slowly, drawing back. Valjean simply nods.

“I promised you that I was yours,” Valjean says. “And indeed I am; you may do with me as you like. But permit me one thing—that I may bring take this boy home, so that he is seen by a doctor.”

Javert’s eyes flit down to Marius’ nearly lifeless body. “Who is he?” he asks, and then answers his own question: “Marius. He was at the barricades.”

“Yes. Javert—”

“He’s dead.”

“Not yet,” Valjean snaps, tired. “Not yet. Only wounded. Please, Javert, it will be an hour at most.”

Javert’s movements are dreamlike, as though he is not quite aware where he is, and Valjean stares. He has never seen the man in such a state before. But then Javert calls for a coach and he and Valjean are dragging Marius into a fiacre, the driver shooting a glare at them. Valjean cannot believe it.

“We are going to the house on Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire?” he asks in astonishment. Javert, silent, gives a short nod. His eyes are hidden beneath his hat, chin tucked in his collar, and he looks more like a phantom than a man. What with Javert beside him and Marius sprawled across their laps, it is the most awkward thing Valjean has ever endured.

At last they reach the house and hand Marius over, Javert remarking that there would be a funeral there the next day. Valjean glares at him, but the porter is far too distracted to make note of the comment, and Marius is more dead than alive by now.

It is there Valjean realizes that Cosette is expecting him home. He considers her reaction if he never returned, and his throat constricts painfully at the thought. He tugs on Javert’s sleeve and the man glances at him, expression hidden by the shadow of his hat. It is impossible to tell whether he’s angry or passive.

“What?”

“Grant me one last favor,” Valjean says desperately. Javert snorts, derisive.

“And what would that be?”

“Let me go home, just for a minute, so that I can say goodbye. Then I am yours.”

Javert says nothing to him, but instructs the driver to go to Valjean’s current residence. Valjean sinks into the filthy cushion, sighing with relief.

When they arrive at No. 7, Javert is even more peculiar. He does not look at Valjean, chin still tucked into his collar, nor does he attempt to speak with him. When Valjean pauses at the door, uncertain, Javert lifts his head and says,

“I will wait for you here.”

Valjean nods in acknowledgement, still uncertain, and enters the apartment.

Cosette is asleep. He deigns not to wake her, yet; instead he walks to his own room and changes from his filthy clothes. He would bathe, but Javert is waiting beside him.

He turns to leave, then is seized by a peculiar fancy and walks to the window, peering down at the street. Valjean’s wings ruffle in shock.

Javert is gone.

He is outside in moments, looking round. Perhaps Javert has decided to leave him be for the night. But no, that is not like Javert, and even if he had he would have at least told Valjean he had a night to himself before he was arrested. This is—this is _strange._

Valjean’s gaze catches on a feather some distance in front of him. He walks over and picks it up: it is black and glossy, and could only belong to one man.

There is another feather at the end of the street, and then another a little ways away. By the fifth feather it is quite clear that Javert’s wings are leaving a trail behind him, whether Javert is aware of it or not.

Valjean follows it, picking up each feather and tucking them away in his pocket.

“I do not understand how you found me.”

Javert’s voice is a low rumble, made quieter by the fact his face is turned away from Valjean. He is balancing on the parapet, teetering on the tips of his toes with his arms spread a little, and he looks like a child at play rather than a man hovering impossibly high above the Seine.

Valjean removes the feathers from his pocket. “You dropped some things.”

Javert looks round at last, then scowls. “Damned things,” he mutters, and Valjean is unsure as to whether or not he means his wings or the feathers.

Javert falls forward a bit, arms stuttering, and for an awful moment Valjean thinks he is going to fall. Then he settles back onto the parapet and Valjean’s heartbeat slows, but only a little.

“I wish you would come down,” he mutters. Javert gives a high little laugh.

“I bet you do! I bet you wish a lot of things!”

He does not come down from the parapet.

“Javert,” Valjean says pleadingly, stepping up beside him. He will grab the man’s legs if he must. “You do not seriously mean to jump, do you?”

“I don’t know myself.”

Valjean blinks. Suddenly, Javert shrugs off his greatcoat, the fabric slipping to the ground; then he reaches round and unties his wing bindings awkwardly. The bindings he holds forward, dropping them above the Seine. They vanish into the black.

“I suppose,” Javert says, as if he is speaking to himself rather than Valjean, “that I do mean to jump. Fall. I don’t care. I’ve already turned my resignation in.” He peers at Valjean. “I would’ve done it by now, if you hadn’t gotten in the way.”

“I haven’t gotten in the way of anything.”

Javert snorts. “You have gotten in the way of _everything_, down to the law itself. You were there in Toulon and you were in Montreuil-sur-Mer, and you were even at the barricades—you’re everywhere I go, dogging my heels like a faithful hound, except you always _muddy things up_.” Javert scowls. “A saintly convict, a thieving angel. You make no sense.”

“I think I make perfect sense.”

“_You_—” Javert breaks off and takes a deep breath as though calming himself. “Your _existence_ makes no sense, Valjean. Convicts should not be honest, saints should not be thieves. You—you simply—God! You confound me!”

Valjean bites his lip. “Javert, come down and we can talk. You may even arrest me if you like. I am… all right with it, I suppose.”

“It would not be just,” Javert says, ragged. “Don’t you see? It would not be _just_. It is lawful but it isn’t just, and _that_ is where my dilemma lies. What is the law if it isn’t just?”

“It is a great many things, Javert. Come down.”

“Did I tell you in Montreuil-sur-Mer that I have never flown?”

Valjean blinks, amazed at this new topic of conversation. Javert’s wings shake a little, fine feathers fluttering, and then he sighs, the appendages growing still.

“I never had the chance to fly,” Javert muses. “I was born in a jail, did you know? And then I lived on the street before I became a guard. There was no place to fly, no time to indulge in fancy.” His wings shake again. “I haven’t spread my wings in nearly thirty years. I have never needed them. You know, Valjean, I think that even if I tried to fly I could not. The bones must have atrophied.”

“Try to spread your wings,” Valjean murmurs. “Just to see if you can.”

Javert scoffs. But his wings shake again, rising a little; they spread slowly, in stops and spurts, but eventually they are extended fully. Valjean marvels. The wings themselves are shaking, but every feather shines, as though carefully tended.

Javert laughs a little. “See, Valjean? Even if I tried to fly I’d fall.”

“Javert, I don’t—”

“Though I suppose I’ve already fallen,” Javert murmurs. Valjean stares at him, uncomprehending. “Goodbye, Valjean.”

He does not have time to reach out before Javert steps off the parapet.

With his wings spread, the man looks like Lucifer, like an angel cast from heaven, doomed to crash upon the Earth.


	4. stuck in the nest

Javert’s wings are broken.

This is clear from the very moment Valjean hauls him from the Seine. The limbs are bent horribly, in such a way that when he manages to revive the man, Javert screams once and passes out again.

Valjean is very, very careful as he carries him to the fiacre.

The doctor’s face is one of shock when he sees the damage, mouth hanging open, and he remains still for several moments. Valjean waits beside him nervously. At last, the man clears his throat and moves to examine Javert more closely.  
“What happened?” he asks, as he probes over the feathers. Javert shudders under him, but does not wake.

“He fell from a bridge,” Valjean lies. “A man pushed him—I did not see who it was. I had to fish him from the Seine.”

“Couldn’t he have flown?”

“He has never learned.”

The doctor’s lips are pursed as he steps back from Javert’s limp form. “I have rarely seen cases this bad,” he tells Valjean quietly. “Considering the damage, if he has never flown, or expressed a wish to…”

An image stirs in Valjean’s mind of the lifers at Toulon, and nausea rises in his stomach. He pushes the thought away hastily.

“I would like to avoid amputation at all costs.”

“He is a crow, monsieur.”

_He would be better off without his wings_. But if they cut them, Valjean knows, deep down, how the world would forever see Javert. The inspector is of an age where he could have been condemned to life in the prisons when amputation was still common. If the limbs are removed, he will have to look over his shoulder for the law forever more, and the copper brown of his skin will hardly help, either. Valjean bites his lip.

“Try to save the wings,” he says firmly. “If you cannot, we will discuss amputation from there. And he will be _awake_ when the final decision is made.”

The doctor nods, opening his bag. “Certainly.”

For the next few days, Javert does not stir—though his breathing remains consistent—and his wings don’t seem to be improving. The doctor grows more worried with every visit and, as a result, Valjean himself grows more worried. At night, he dreams of a wingless Javert and wakes up gasping.

But on the fourth day, Valjean looks up from his newspaper to find Javert staring back at him, wide-eyed.

“Valjean,” Javert croaks. He shifts, as if trying to push himself up, and then cries out and falls to the mattress again. He scowls at Valjean. “What have you done to me?”

Valjean checks his temper, careful to keep any harshness from his voice. “I have done nothing. Your wings broke after you spread them in the fall.”

“I…”

“The doctor said you are almost lucky. Had your wings not borne the brunt of your fall, you’d likely have broken your ribs, and your pain would be far more acute.”

Javert laughs bitterly. “I have never been… been in pain like this.”

Valjean has nothing to say to that.

The inspector is quiet as the days pass, eating little and speaking less. The doctor says his wings are healing, thank God—Valjean does not know what they would do if the appendages stayed ruined forever—but Javert himself hardly seems to grow better.

His tacit manner is not what worries Valjean. Javert has been quiet as long as he has known him; granted, they haven’t seen each other in years, and when they did, it was a purely professional relationship, but Javert never spoke more than was necessary. Incidents like that in the meadow were rare.

What worries him is how Javert does not seem to _care_ anymore.

Inspector Javert of Montreuil-sur-Mer _had_ cared, in his own odd way. He had cared to perform his duties to the very letter, had cared to arrive to work every morning with carefully polished boots and his greatcoat buttoned as was proper. He had put forth great effort into everything Valjean had seen him do. And as far as Valjean can remember, the man was exactly the same in Toulon.

Yet now, Javert does not ask for a clean shirt, or water to shave, or even his meals. He eats when Valjean sets food in front of him and stays abed the rest of the time, eyes either closed or staring straight ahead into nothing. Even Cosette and Toussaint, who never see him, grow worried.

No matter what he says to him, Valjean cannot stir Javert.

Two weeks pass before Valjean grows tired of it. It is the evening, the sun glowing gold in the window, and the day had simmered with June heat. The bedroom Javert is staying in has grown stuffy and foul-smelling, and though Valjean throws open every window, he cannot get rid of the smell.

Javert is lying with his arms wrapped round the pillow, wings spread over the mattress. Presumably, he is sleeping, but if he is, then Valjean has never known a man to sleep as much as Inspector Javert.

“I am going to eat,” Valjean says, without looking behind him. He is looking out the window and breathing the fresh air, as he has done so for about the past third of an hour.

Javert doesn’t answer. Valjean doesn’t expect him to.

“It’s suppertime,” he says, fiddling with the window frame. “Or about. Are you hungry?”

“Mm.”

Valjean glances over his shoulder at last. “Inspector?”

“I have told you to call me Javert,” Javert complains, voice muffled by the pillow. Valjean smiles to himself.

“My apologies. Are you hungry, _Javert_?”

“No,” Javert mutters, and shifts. His left wing hits the bedpost. He gives a small cry, then buries his face in the pillow again. Valjean bites his lip.

“I’ll bring you something anyway,” he says, and retreats.

Cosette has gone out; to visit her Marius, Toussaint says. Valjean nods and helps the woman prepare a small dinner, then dismisses her. Her sister has been ailing of late, and Valjean encourages visits.

He eats silently and quickly, a plan forming in his mind.

Javert is still lying with his face in the pillow when Valjean returns. Valjean touches his shoulder lightly, then sets the tray on the bedside table. Javert peers up.

“What?”

He gestures to the food. “Your supper.”

“I am not hungry.”

“You haven’t eaten all day. Has food become alien to you?”

Javert grumbles something foul, which Valjean pretends not to hear. He gestures to the tray again, and Javert pushes himself into a sitting position, taking the tray onto his lap. In the first days after the Seine, Valjean had to force the food into the man’s mouth, but that time is long past. Valjean’d bet they’re both grateful for it—it had been an altogether unpleasant experience for him, and it could hardly have been better for Javert.

“Would you like a shave?”

Javert looks up from the food, unnaturally pale eyes squinting at Valjean with suspicion. “What?”

“Would you like a shave?” Valjean repeats. He gestures to the inspector’s features. “I have never known you to wear a beard.”

Javert stabs his fork at the beef. “I dislike them. I tried to wear one once, in my youth. It itched.”

“Then you can hardly be comfortable now.”

“Hardly.” Javert looks at him sideways. “But I doubt you would trust me with a razor, would you?”

Valjean shifts uncomfortably, unwilling to answer. They lapse into an awkward silence that lasts for several minutes, and it seems the conversation will go no further.

Then a thought occurs to him. Valjean keeps quiet until Javert has finished; then, taking the tray from him, he says, “I could help, if you wished.”

Javert blinks, frowning. “I wouldn’t want—”

“You said it itches. It is hardly a lie to say that I have never liked you, but I…” Valjean clears his throat. “I would not want you to be uncomfortable, even so.”

Javert mutters something that Valjean cannot quite make out. He catches the words _saint_ and _useless_, but little else. He sighs.

“Well?”

“I suppose,” Javert mumbles, looking away. “If it truly means so much to you.”

“It is settled, then.”

He puts the tray away downstairs, then fetches shaving supplies. Javert is sitting on the edge of the bed when Valjean comes back, arms folded. He looks like a petulant child. He looks like _Javert_.

Valjean sits beside him, wetting the washcloth, then begins to dampen Javert’s face. the man scowls.

“Hot water was not necessary,” he grumbles. “I use cold. I always have.”

Valjean shrugs. “It was no trouble.”

“I do not need—”

He begins to spread lather over Javert’s face. “Close your mouth, unless you fancy the idea of getting soap in your mouth.”

Javert obeys, closing his eyes as well. Valjean tilts his chin up slightly so as to spread the lather wherever necessary. He picks up the razor and begins to pull it across the lather.

He is gentle as he works, as careful as he can be. He does not miss how rapid Javert’s breathing is, despite how he said he doubted Valjean would do him harm. Perhaps it is simply the feeling of another man holding a razor to his face.

It is no matter. The idea of hurting Javert is so alien Valjean would not even have thought of it had the man not mentioned it. 

“You wish to keep your sideburns, I assume?” he asks, pausing, and Javert gives the barest nod.

“I had surmised as much,” Valjean murmurs. He begins his methodical strokes once more. “This is as new for me as it is for you, by the way.”

“Oh?”

He shrugs, though Javert cannot see him. “I have never shaved another before. Myself, certainly. This seems easier; I do not have to peer into a mirror to make sure each stroke is as I want it.”

“Why _do_ you shave?” Javert asks, without opening his eyes. “It is not particularly fashionable, to be clean-shaven. Or so I have heard.”

His hand stills over Javert’s cheek. Valjean shakes himself after a moment and resumes his work. He pays unnecessarily close attention to his strokes.

He clears his throat. “A beard reminds me of Toulon. I did not have the choice to shave, then. If I had, perhaps I would wear a beard now. I tried once, as you did. Cosette was twelve. She told me it aged me.”

“Ah.”

Valjean finds his work is done. He dampens the washcloth and wipes it over Javert’s face and throat again, cleaning the last traces of lather from the man’s skin. When that is done, he dries the razor with his handkerchief and snaps it shut.

When he looks back at Javert, the inspector has opened his eyes at last and is running his hand over his face. His eyes dart to Valjean.

“Thank you,” he mutters. 

Valjean shrugs. “It is no trouble,” he says, and sets the shaving things to the side. He studies Javert a moment. He looks—like himself. Like the fearsome inspector, not some old crow who’s been abed for the past two weeks with broken wings. Valjean clears his throat.

“What about your wings?”

Javert’s gaze snaps back to him. “What, you want to pluck them?”  
“Hardly. They need to be washed.”

The limbs truly are in terrible condition, a stark change from the glossy things Valjean remembers on the bridge. Javert has been losing feathers daily, and he resembles a half-plucked chicken more than a crow. Besides that, they have lost their sheen.

They look like a convict’s wings.

Javert shoves himself away from Valjean. “You are _not_ touching my wings.”

“Javert—”

“No.” Javert’s face is hard. “I—my mother and I are the only two who have ever touched them. I am letting _no one_ clean them, let alone _Jean Valjean_.”

“They have not been washed since the Seine,” Valjean says quietly. “It would be quick. They are the reason this room stinks.”

“Let me be.”

He narrows his eyes. “Fine. But don’t expect my company anymore—I can hardly stand the smell as it is. It _will_ worsen.”

Javert does not reply, just turns his back to him. His wings are limp, even with their splints, and the sight might tug at Valjean’s heart if it wasn’t Javert.

“Good night,” Valjean says. He collects the shaving supplies, then leaves quietly.

Javert is silent.

He brings up breakfast and lunch, opening the door just wide enough to set the tray inside and then close the door again. Javert does not speak to him, but when Valjean returns with the next meal, the first tray is always waiting for him.

He works in the garden, speaks to Cosette. He does not visit Marius Pontmercy. Valjean is tired of sickbeds.

It takes a week for Javert to leave the bedroom.

Valjean is sitting in the library, wings tucked behind his back while he reads. He hears a soft tread and looks up, expecting to see Cosette, but it is instead Javert’s face that greets him.

“Hello,” Valjean says, for lack of a better thing to say. Javert does not look at him, eyes on his feet.

“My wings,” he mutters, and doesn’t finish.

“Do they hurt?”

“No, they…” Javert falters. “They need a wash, but I… I suppose you won’t let me alone with a tub full of water, would you?”

Valjean nods. He closes his book.

“Would you…”

Javert trails off. His face is dark with embarrassment, brows drawn in a scowl, and Valjean decides the man has endured enough.

“Help you?” he finishes. Javert nods.

Valjean sets his book down. “I will,” he says, and Javert is turning round and walking back upstairs before he has even risen from his seat.

He does not even draw a full bath, instead opting to fill the tub halfway before calling Javert inside. Javert looks at the water, then removes his shirt awkwardly and sits cross-legged beside the tub.

Valjean chances a glance at the man’s chest before he sits down himself. Javert is far skinnier than he would’ve ever imagined, ribs easily visible. He swallows.

“Just get this over with,” Javert rumbles, as Valjean sits behind him. His wings ruffle a little, despite their splints.

Valjean chooses not to respond, instead reaching for the soap.

He has not cleaned another’s wings since Cosette, all those years ago, but the task is hardly difficult. It is almost easier than cleaning his own. And, as with the shaving, the rhythm is easy enough to fall into—comb through a patch of feathers, gently, then lather them with soap and rinse. Comb the next patch, lather, rinse. He stops thinking about it soon enough, movements becoming mechanical.

But Javert is still shuddering under his touch from time to time. After a particularly violent tremor, Valjean sets the washcloth down, brow creasing.

“Am I hurting you?”

“No,” Javert mutters. Valjean’s mouth twists.

“You said your mother was the only other person who has ever touched your wings,” he says, wringing the washcloth out over the basin. “Tell me about her.”

A laugh. “Never.”

“I will tell you about mine if you tell me about yours,” Valjean offers. Strangely enough, he finds himself curious about the woman. Was she like her son at all, or was she wholly different? Is she the one who shaped Javert into this odd, unbending man?

Javert does not respond for a long time. So Valjean waits, picking the comb up and twisting it in hand. He will not return to the task until Javert says _something_.

“She was a fortuneteller,” Javert says stiffly, at long last. “She was arrested for it when she was with child with me, and I—I was born in the prison where she was kept. We lived there until I was three. When I was seven, she was arrested for the same.” He falters. “I used to think that it was her fault, for never trying to get any other work, but now… now I see that she could not. Likely she did when I was a boy, but I was too young to remember.”

Valjean thinks of Javert’s burnished copper skin, the dark (though graying) hair that he has worn unfashionably long for years. “Was she a gypsy?”

“Yes.”

“But your eyes are blue,” Valjean murmurs, almost to himself. Javert jerks a nod.

“My father was not. And before you ask, no, I never knew him.” Javert’s voice is distant. “He was imprisoned in the galleys before I was even born. Likely shortly after I was conceived, I think, according to what records I have seen. My mother never spoke of him kindly, when she did speak of him.”

“You have seen records?”

Javert snorts. “Don’t think I was taking an interest in my family. The man died when I was thirty, and since I was his only family, they called me in for him.” He shrugs, wings shifting in Valjean’s hands. “I let them do with his body what they wanted, but I did glance at his records just to see exactly what earned him a lifer’s sentence.”

“What did?”

“That, I will not say.”

“I will not think of you less for it,” Valjean tells him quietly, beginning to comb out another patch of feathers. “The crimes of the parent do not affect the child.”

“A regular philosopher. You promised to tell me of your own mother.”

Valjean quirks his mouth in a smile. “I did. I must confess, I don’t… remember her well. She died when I was only eight.”

“Oh, you bastard,” Javert breathes, whipping round. One of his splints knocks into the washbasin, and he gives a short cry.

“Are you—”

He waves a hand, though his expression is pained. “Never mind it. You hardly remember your mother, yet you promised to tell me of her if I told you of mine?”

“I haven’t forgotten her entirely,” Valjean replies. “Time has… simply dulled some things, as did Toulon. I cannot remember my brother-in-law’s name anymore, or even his children. It is only my sister and my father that I know. I barely even know their faces.”

“Your mother was Jeanne Mathieu.” Javert is examining his fingernails. “Your brother, Luc Favreau. His children were Marguerite, Petit Luc, Jean, Émile, Jean-Marie, Euphrasie, and Jeannot, in order of age. I suppose they were running out of names by the end.”

Valjean is flabbergasted. “How do you know their names?”  
“It is in your records.” Javert’s gaze has not moved from his nails. “I have had the opportunity to look at them many a time. The children were all falcons, except for Euphrasie. She had finch wings, probably from her father.”

“He _was_ a finch,” Valjean remembers. His hands have stilled on Javert’s wings. He can remember his nieces and nephews a little better now, with names to put their faces to. Marguerite had reddish hair, Émile a blonde. The rest all had dark brown curls, like their mother.

Petit Jean had looked just like his uncle. That was what his mother would say, at least, and Valjean always believed her. The boy had had his face, and his eyes, and a dusting of freckles across his whole body. On Valjean, Toulon tanned his skin such that the marks are nearly imperceptible, but perhaps on Petit Jean…

He knocks the thought away. He doesn’t even know if the boy survived the winter—and it’s more likely than not that he died. At the very least, Jeanne and little Jeannot lived.

“You know what is odd?” Valjean asks, brushing Javert’s feathers. They are… soft. Softer than he would expect.

“Hm?”

“Cosette’s true name is Euphrasie,” he says. “It is a northern nickname, and you being from the south, I don’t know…” he trails off. “And my sister’s Euphrasie, we called her Cosette all the time. She answered to it more than her given name.”

“That is odd,” Javert murmurs, shifting. “So you had forgotten your niece when you named her?”

Valjean frowns. “I did not name Cosette. I believe that Fantine and the girl’s father did, whoever he was.”

“So you—you are not her father?”

“Of course not! Fantine was young enough to be my daughter. Did you think I had taken her as a—as a lover?”

“It made sense. And that was what the papers said, after she died and you were sent back to prison.”

“You should not believe everything you see in the papers,” Valjean mutters. “They have even said I died, but look at me.”

“I doubt a dead man could be brushing my wings out,” Javert says, a little wryly, and Valjean cannot help but smile. “You know, you have not yet told me of your mother.”

“Ah.”

He stares at the wings. Javert ruffles them in annoyance.

“Valjean.”

“She was sick often,” Valjean says softly. “My sister was nine years older than me, a stillbirth and three miscarriages between us. We had a brother, born two years before I, but he died when he was six. So my father had her stay inside, so that she didn’t get any sicker, and he…” Valjean sighs. “He never allowed her to do any work. When she died, he… changed. He was sad more often than not. When I was fourteen he fell from a tree he was working, and died instantly. He was smiling when they found him.”

There is silence. Valjean clears his throat.

“They were very kind, my parents. And they loved each other more than anything. After my mother went, I think… I think my father could hardly bear to be without her anymore.”

“You rarely find that sort of love,” Javert says quietly. “Certainly not between my parents.”

“Both our mothers went first. Do you find that odd?”

“Not really. In the grand scheme of things, women are no likelier to die earlier than men, but in the case of our mothers…” he shrugs. “Yours was sickly. Mine was a young gypsy woman who was in and out of jail all her life, and had no money to her name—whereas your father was probably a strapping sort of fellow not unlike yourself, and mine was in the care of the government. They like keeping the lifers alive as long as they can.”

“When you put it that way, I suppose it makes sense.”

Valjean has finished combing out the last patch of feathers, and so he reaches for the soap to lather them. Javert’s wings are a hundred times better than when they started, no longer carrying the stink of the Seine. Though the feathers have not regained their glossiness. They will have to be oiled again, and then again and again, on a regular basis. Valjean wonders what sort of oil Javert uses to achieve that sort of sheen.

He rinses the soap out, then wrings the washcloth out for the final time and lays it over the side of the tub. Javert’s eyes dart back to him.

“Are we finished?”

“No. You still need the oils.”

Javert shifts. “But you only have falcon and mourning dove oil, I suppose? That will not do for crow wings such as mine.”

“Ah,” Valjean says faintly. “I had not thought of that.”

“Of course you didn’t.”

“I will go out tomorrow and buy crow oil,” he says, staring at the dark feathers before him. “You must have it.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You don’t understand what?”

“Why you are taking care of me,” Javert mutters. His shoulders hunch a little. “I have—I have caused nothing but trouble for you. You could’ve let me drown in the Seine and washed your hands of me forever, and instead—”

“There’s no way I could have let you drown.”

“—instead you have brought me into your home, and you are _cleaning_ my _wings_.”

Valjean is silent, stroking Javert’s feathers with a thumb ever so lightly. He is not sure he has an answer to the question. He reaches over to the down feathers, caressing them, and Javert gives a shuddering sigh.

Valjean recoils immediately. “I’m sorry, I did not mean to—”

“It is hardly your fault,” Javert mutters. He is red-faced. “I should know to… to control myself by now.”

“It is a natural reaction,” Valjean says gently, though he has no idea. No one has ever touched the down of his wings, not even himself. It is not exactly something one _does_, unless you are close.

But he had been so fascinated by Javert’s wings, so unthinking in his movements—

He does not want to think about it.

“I’m sorry,” he repeats. Javert shrugs.

“It doesn’t matter.”

Valjean reaches up again, thumbing a covert mindlessly, and Javert exhales deeply. This time, he does not snap his hand away, simply pauses.

“Do you wish for me to stop?”

Javert pauses. “I… no.”

Valjean brings both hands up, then, stroking the feathers as gently as he can. They are so wonderfully soft beneath his fingers, so sleek, and soon enough they will shine as well.

Javert keeps sighing. Idly, Valjean wonders how pleasurable this is—is it akin to massaging a sore muscle, or a hand running through one’s hair, or something else entirely?

He does not stop. This is the closest he has been with anyone for a long, long time, and even though it is Javert’s wings that he holds, Valjean sees no reason to cease.

It gets easier, after that.

Javert’s strength returns, bit by bit, and so does his demeanor. He becomes gruff again, though no longer cold. Valjean finds he quite likes it.

On the days when Javert is feeling particularly strong, they debate, everything from the law to religion to the pricing of wing oil in the market. A few times Valjean even pulls him into the garden to teach him how to tend the plants, as it seems Javert’s life has been devoid of any personal habits up until this point, but the man is utterly inept at it.

“I am,” Javert says wryly on one such afternoons, “utterly inept with most living things, it seems.”

One day Valjean rips his trousers trying to yank a particularly stubborn root from the ground, and though Javert laughs, the next morning Valjean finds him bent over them, brow furrowed as he pulls a needle through the cloth with more gentleness than Valjean thought he had in him. From then on, Valjean leaves all torn clothing at Javert’s door, and the next day they are mysterious mended. The man has even begun to try his hand at embroidery.

“Sewing,” Valjean says conversationally one July morning, as he pours a glass of water. “Have you done it long?”

Javert shrugs. “I have been a bachelor all my life, and a poor one at that. I can hardly afford to buy a new coat every time there is a rip in the fabric.”

“And embroidery?”

“It occupies my mind and my hands at the same time.”

“You might try reading, if you wish to occupy your mind,” Valjean says, lifting the glass to his lips. “It is only a suggestion, of course. Sewing is hobby enough.”

Javert arches an eyebrow. “You do not find it womanish?”

“Tailors sew.”

The man dips his head in acknowledgement. “I will not read. I do not…” Javert trails off, face reddening. “I learned late. It has always been a struggle for me.”

He pushes himself off the counter. “Well, if you are looking for sewing partners, Cosette is always available. Although she does prefer crochet.”

Javert stays with them until the end of July, when the doctor announces that his wings have healed fully. They are still atrophied, and so he prescribes various stretches and exercises that will strengthen them. From the look on Javert’s face, it is clear that if it is left to the inspector, the instructions will be ignored completely.

“I’ll make sure he does them, monsieur,” Valjean says pleasantly. The glare Javert shoots him is poisonous to wither his entire garden.

Javert is surprised to find that his apartment has not been rented out. When he returns, he tells Valjean that the landlady had been too sentimental to clear it of his things, just yet. Javert himself cannot seem to fathom why.

“I was gone two months, without a single word,” he says sourly. “By the end of June, she supposed that I was dead at the barricades. She lost money.”

“But you have a home to go back to.”

“I do.”

“Will you return to visit me?”

Javert glances at him. Valjean fiddles with his cuffs, nervous.

“I will,” Javert mutters. He wipes his brow. “Sunday afternoons, for tea. How does that sound?”

“You will not come more often?”

“Perhaps I may. But I intend to return to my job as inspector,” Javert says, sweeping his coat off, “and I am not sure if I will find the time.”

He finds the time. He finds the time on Monday evenings and Wednesdays at lunch and, on one memorable occasion, at six o’clock on a Thursday morning in August, tapping his walking cane against the cobblestones impatiently. The times when Javert visits are odd ones, aside from Sunday afternoons (he arrives always at 4:00 on the dot), but Valjean becomes used to them quickly. Javert has always been an odd man.

He is an odd friend to have, too. But he is a good one.

Valjean has never had many friends, beside Fauchelevent. Javert is different from all of them. He is at Valjean’s side more often than not, despite his work, and always touching him in some way. A hand clasping Valjean’s as they greet, fingers brushing white hair from his brow. Valjean clings to every touch like a drowning man clings to a raft.

He cannot fathom why. Perhaps it is because he has rarely been touched kindly, or perhaps it’s because it is Javert who touches him. Javert is not the sort of man that gives touches freely.

Cosette seems glad of their friendship. “You have always been so lonely to me, Papa,” she tells him one day at breakfast. Valjean raises an eyebrow.

“What does that mean, my dear?”

Cosette smiles. “You have never had anyone but me and Uncle,” she says. “But nowadays you have Monsieur l’Inspecteur visiting you, and I have never seen you so happy.”

“Really,” Valjean says faintly, and fails to finish buttering his toast.

Part of him says that he should not be so happy to have _Javert_ as his friend, but the rest of him argues _why shouldn’t I?_ Javert is a man reborn, after all. Half the time, he enters Valjean’s house complaining about something unjust in the legal code, how this should be corrected or how that is in fact unfair. He is still rigid, but he is relaxing. He is _learning_. Most of all, he cares for Valjean’s company.

And one late September day, it becomes very clear exactly what way Javert cares for him.

They are sitting in the study, Valjean reading aloud from a book while the inspector stitches. It is fiction, something Javert claims turns his stomach but never actually rejects, and that id precisely why Valjean picked it.

Valjean finishes the page, then stops. After a bit, Javert looks up with an irritated expression on his face.

“Why did you stop?”

“It was the end of the chapter.” He shuts the book. “We ought to stop for tonight. It is getting late.”

“Ah.”

They are quiet. Neither of them move; their position is quite comfortable, in Valjean’s opinion. He is against one arm with his wings hanging over the side, while Javert is stretched out on his side, stockinged feet on Valjean’s lap.

“Valjean,” Javert says at last, “there is… something I wish to talk to you about.”

Valjean blinks. “Yes?”

“I…”

Javert does not finish. Never has there been such trepidation in his voice before; at least, Valjean has never known it. The crow sets his stitching down abruptly, then stands up and begins to pace.

“It is of a personal matter,” Javert mutters. “Slightly embarrassing, I would suppose, so I would—I would rather you not share it with anyone.”

“Of course not, Javert.”

Valjean has never seen Javert like this. No—he has, but only once, and it was at the bridge. Javert runs his hands through his hair.

He glances at Valjean. “You are religious aren’t you? Damn. Of all the men I could…”

Again, he does not finish the sentence. Valjean sets his book down.

“What on Earth is it?”

“It is about you,” Javert says. He does not look at Valjean. “The—the way I feel about you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“And I don’t know how to say it.” The inspector’s blue-eyed glance darts to him again, if only for a moment. “Will you forgive me what I do next?”

“Forgive yo—”

Javert crouches before him, cupping Valjean’s jaw in hand, and kisses him.

It is short, and very chaste, but Valjean is still when Javert pulls away.

“Now you see,” Javert mutters. “I—I did not know how to tell you.”

“Javert,” Valjean breathes. He buries his fingers in Javert’s shirt. “_Mon ami_, I—I—”

“Can I do it again, just once?”

Valjean nods minutely. Javert’s mouth covers his own again, only this time he is kissing Valjean _passionately_, full of fervor. Valjean can do naught but clutch at Javert’s chest helplessly, and kiss back. He hopes he’s kissing back. He’s never kissed anyone before.

At last Javert pulls back, the both of them panting for breath. His lips are pinked, and a strand of hair has escaped its queue.

_He looks beautiful like this_, Valjean thinks suddenly. _Not at all like an inspector_.

“Forgive me,” Javert says suddenly, stuttering in a most uncharacteristic way, and releases Valjean’s shoulders. Valjean stares up at him, uncomprehending.

Javert bows to him, then flees the room.


	5. as the crow flies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw for mentions of homophobia & slight internalized homophobia in this chapter.

Javert does not return the next day, nor the next, or even the day after that. The days turn into a week, the week into two, and still, Javert does not appear.

He left his embroidery. 

In his haze, that is all Valjean can quite manage to focus on. Javert kissed him—Javert_ kissed_ him—and then fled, leaving naught but the half-finished embroidery in his wake. 

It’s a pair of wings adorning the corner of a handkerchief. After some examination, Valjean realizes the wings are falcon’s.

How long has Javert cared for him in this way?

Valjean can hardly fathom it. Inspector Javert besotted is one thing, something Valjean had never imagined. It seemed impossible. And Javert besotted with a man—and Valjean at that—

He is not sure what to make of it.

What he does know is that he misses Javert, painfully. Valjean had no idea the man’s absence could hurt so much. Javert was once his jailer, for God’s sake, but now Valjean is lost without him.

He can do nothing. He doesn’t know Javert’s address, and though Valjean supposes that the police would know, he does not dare show his face to any of them besides Javert. He doesn’t even know which station Javert reports to.

Strangely enough, it is Cosette who takes the matter into her own hands.

When Javert has been gone for nearly three weeks, she finds Valjean kneeling in the garden, a cross look on her face. Valjean blinks up at her.

“Where has Monsieur Javert gone?”

Valjean falters. “I don’t know,” he says at last, looking at the plants before him. “He didn’t tell me where he’d be, he simply… left.”

Cosette crosses her arms. “Did the two of you get into a spat?”

“Hardly.”

“That is very strange, because he has been gone for almost three weeks with no word,” Cosette says quietly. “Are you hiding something from me, Papa?”

“I… not at all, my dear.”

It is shameful, how easily the lie passes through his lips. Valjean stares at the garden hollowly.

When he looks up again, Cosette is gone.

Valjean does not see her again for the rest of the day. At last, when the sky is beginning to darken, the door swings open and Cosette stomps inside in a manner most unlike her usual dainty ways, loud enough that Valjean can hear her all the way from the study.

“Papa!”

“Coming, my darling,” Valjean says, setting his book down. He shakes his wings out, then heads to the front door.

Cosette is smiling triumphantly, arms crossed. Valjean has not seen her sport such a proud pose since she was a girl.

Standing just over her shoulder is a very bashful looking Javert.

Javert is perhaps a full head taller than Cosette, and far less delicate, yet for the moment he appears almost cowed in Cosette’s presence. Valjean gapes.

“You have been in a dreadful melancholy these past few weeks, Papa,” Cosette informs him. “For the longest time, I couldn’t figure out why, and then I realized that the inspector has been missing.” She pauses. “I suppose I was very foolish not to notice—he is here more than I am! So here he is, and now the two of you may resolve whatever issue has been driving you apart."

She smiles at the both of them, then walks inside. Valjean stares after her.

“I should’ve known you’d raise your daughter to be more stubborn then an ox,” Javert rumbles. “She tracked me down at the station, then refused to leave until I agreed to come with her.”

“She is not stubborn as an ox.”

“If that is not stubbornness, I haven’t the faintest idea what to call it.” Javert raises one thick eyebrow. “Personally, I admire her for it. It will bring her far.”

“It will.”

Silence settles. It is an awkward, tense thing; Javert is fiddling with his hat, while Valjean stares at his own stockinged feet. At last he says, “Perhaps we could discuss last time. And—and everything that occurred.”

“Might we do it somewhere a bit more private?”

“Of course,” Valjean says, turning. “My bedroom will do nicely. Come.”

Too late, he realizes that he has just invited a man who fancies him into his bedroom. But Javert follows him silently, hands tucked into his pockets, and a moment later Valjean scolds himself for entertaining such thoughts. If the past three weeks have been any indication, Javert will not so much as kiss him again without enthusiastic encouragement.

“So,” Valjean says, when he has closed the door. “I had thought we might—are you still wearing your coat?”

“Yes.”

He sighs. “Take that off. We are friends, and besides, you will grow hot in it.”

If the look on Javert’s face is any indication, he very much disagrees, but he removes the coat and folds it carefully before setting it on the table. Only then does Valjean realize the state of the man’s wings.

“Have you begun binding your wings again?”

“Yes,” Javert says, and does not look at him.  
“The doctor warned you not to bind them,” Valjean hisses, striding over. “He said that they might weaken—oh, you _fool_—”

He reaches for the bindings, and Javert arches away, an irritated look on his face. “It is necessary. For an inspector to show up to work with his wings unbound would be incredibly improper.”

“Then perhaps you shouldn’t be an inspector!”

Javert’s face has grown dark. “I came here at your daughter’s insistence, Je—Valjean. If you continue to harangue me—”

“I am hardly haranguing you.” Valjean forces himself to take a deep breath. "I simply… worry. You are disobeying the doctor. At least take them off here, and ease my mind.”

Javert scowls at him. Valjean bites back a cutting remark about atrophied wings.

“Might I remove them, at the very least? I care about your wings, even if you do not. It will ease my mind.”

“You worry too much,” Javert mutters, but he turns round anyway.

When he has removed the bindings, Valjean takes Javert by the hand and leads him to the bed, so they might sit. The only chair in the room is at his desk, and he isn’t exactly fond of standing for the entire conversation.

“You care for me,” Valjean begins, “in a way that I didn’t expect.”

He does not get any further than that. Javert raises his hand to quiet him, then speaks himself.

“I should not have kissed you. I understand that now.” Javert creases his brow. “But I doubted you are the sort of man that would… that knew some men love others as most love women. I could not quite bring myself to explain it.”

“Why?”

Javert shrugs. “You are religious. I thought that if I told you I cared for you in a romantic sense, you might turn me into the street.”

“I would not—”

“_You_ would not. But think what religious men would do—think of what most people in general would do.” Javert folds his arms. “You must admit that I was not being overly cautious.”

Valjean dips his head in acknowledgment. “Is that why you have stayed away?”

“Yes.”

He reaches for Javert’s face, cupping a hand round the man’s cheek. For a moment, Valjean simply stays like that, memorizing the feeling; Javert’s sideburn scratches at Valjean's skin, and his cheek is cool to the touch, and there is a small scar clipping the edge of his jaw, discernible only through touch. Valjean inhales.

“You needn’t have,” he says softly. “I would have welcomed you back.”

“Do you care for me as I care for you?”

“I don’t know.” He inhales. “But I—I do not mind the way you care for me. I cannot promise that I will ever want to kiss you, or share your bed, but I want your presence. I want to sit on the settee and read a book while you sew with your feet in my lap. I don’t know what that means, but I want it.”

Javert’s hand travels up to cover Valjean’s. "I will not try to kiss you again.”

“Okay.”

“But will you…” Javert swallows, and then he spreads his arms, wide as wings. “Will you embrace me, at the very least?”

“Of course.”

Valjean falls into his arms, wrapping his arms around Javert’s waist and pressing his cheek to the man’s shoulder. He feels Javert inhale. A moment later, a pair of arms entwine over his own back.

He inhales. Javert smells like snuff and sweat and the cold of October, and it is one of the loveliest things Valjean has ever smelled.

“I was wrong,” he whispers. He shifts a little. “I think… I think I know what that means, and what I want. But I cannot say it yet.”

Javert’s hands curve over his back. “I will wait as long as you need me to.”

They do not part for a very long time.

Valjean knows what he wants. For the one of the first times in his life, he knows what he wants, and it would be for himself. Not for his sister and for her children, not for Montreuil-sur-mer, not for Fantine. Not even for Cosette.

Javert would be his and his alone, and maybe that’s why Valjean cannot quite admit that he wants him.

The man has begun visiting them again, just as often. If he is a bit more generous in his touches, if his hands linger on Valjean and he takes every opportunity to rest his head on Valjean’s shoulder, or brush out Valjean’s wings, or twine an arm around his back, well, that is because they are close. How close, no one needs to know but them.

Especially if Valjean cannot quite admit to himself.

Fall bleeds into winter, 1832 turns to 1833, and suddenly Cosette is to be married. The days pass far too quickly for Valjean’s taste.

It seems that only yesterday Valjean washed the mud from her wings to find that she was a darling little mourning dove, only yesterday that she fit in his arms and did not even reach his shoulder. Now, she is to be married.

(Even now, her head barely reaches Valjean’s jawline. Javert in particular seems to find that very amusing.)

He does not like Pontmercy. He does not like that the boy arranged secret rendezvous without Valjean’s knowledge, and he does not like that he was foolish enough to try to throw his life away on the barricades, and he does not like the way that Pontmercy cuts over Cosette in conversation from time to time. Most of all, Valjean does not like that his daughter has barely had time to be an adult and is already marrying.

Cosette is not even twenty. Valjean himself did not find love until he was sixty-four, and he is still trepidatious about it.

But he cannot ignore the way that Cosette’s eyes sparkle when she is with her beau, the excitement in her face when she tells Valjean about the wedding preparations. His little dove is happier than ever, and Valjean tries to like the boy, for her sake. It is difficult, but he tries.

It helps that Pontmercy insists on Javert attending the ceremony. “You must come, monsieur,” he says one day, tea in hand. He has come to visit Cosette at the very same time that Javert has chosen to grace them with hid presence. “By God, you are Monsieur Fauchelevent’s constant companion, practically family. It would be a crime for you not to come!”

“As a police inspector, I am quite familiar with the law,” Javert says, not looking up from the sewing he is working on, “and nowhere does it mention attending the wedding of the daughter of a man you are not even related to.”

Valjean brushes his shoulder. “Please, Javert?”

Javert simply rethreads his needle. Valjean tucks a lock of hair behind his ear.

“As a favor to me,” he says quietly. Javert glances up at him, face exasperated, and nods.

When Valjean looks back at Pontmercy, the boy has an odd expression on his face. Valjean simply smiles at him serenely.

It is a very beautiful ceremony, made even more lovely by Cosette’s joy and Pontmercy’s obvious adoration for his bride. Valjean even feels inclined to like him.

The night before, he had taken the two aside and told them of his past, after much nagging from Javert. Originally, Valjean planned to tell Marius after the wedding, but Javert shot the idea down immediately. _Good God, man, you do not even like the boy, and you will tell him and not your daughter? And I suppose you will leave out all your goodness, too, and paint the very blackest picture of yourself!_

Cosette had taken it far better than Pontmercy. “Papa,” she said, ignoring her fiancé’s squirming, “as long as I have known you, you have been a good man and a good father. I do not care if you were once a thief, or tried to run!” Her face softened then. “I could not ask for a better Papa, and besides, you have always tried to be good. Marius ought to be grateful to have you as his father-in-law.”

“I am,” Pontmercy had said then, very quiet. From the look on Cosette’s face, the two of them would have words.

“Cosette,” Valjean began, and then the girl (no, not a girl, not a girl anymore but a young woman) fixed him with a glare more befitting Javert than dear Cosette Fauchelevent, soon to be Pontmercy.

“Not another word,” she declared, and that was that.

If he is honest, Valjean is very glad of it.

Arrangements have been made for a reception immediately following the ceremony, and as they were made by the Gillenormands, the reception is the most lavish event Valjean has ever attended. The dinner is multiple courses long, the decor beautiful, and the musicians are some of the loveliest Valjean has heard. (Although, he has not had opportunity to listen to many musicians.)

Even so, he is uncomfortable. At one point, Valjean looks at the tables spread through the hall, and realizes that each and every one of them has a basket filled with bread. He cannot help but think of that cold night so many years ago when he himself broke a window just to try and take a single, stale loaf to feed a family of nine.

He thinks of the reaching hands that he presses coins into every time he gives alms, every gamin whose hollow face lights up when given just a crust, or a days-old roll, or a bit of a burned loaf.

He thinks of the girl who he saw at the Gorbeau house, the dark-haired one, a little older than Cosette. The girl who went to the barricades and died for Marius Pontmercy, face never anything but thin, wrists anything but bony.

Valjean knew her, he realizes now. Cosette knew her. She had been—she had been the Thénardiers’ eldest daughter, who pretended a kitten was her baby the night Valjean went to fetch Cosette.

What was her name?  
_Éponine_, Valjean remembers. _Her name was Éponine_.

He looks down the table at Marius Pontmercy, dressed in a fine, fine wedding suit with a gold wedding band on his ring and food upon food, laden before him. Never again will Marius Pontmercy starve, or want for a fire. Valjean looks down at his own plate, his own flute of champagne, and wonders how many times Éponine Thénardier’s stomach rumbled and there was no food, how many times she shivered in the cold. She was barefoot when Valjean visited her family, he recalls, and it snowed.

She was cruel to Cosette when they were young. But she had been a child, and though that is no excuse, he suspects her parents taught her it. There is a difference between being cruel because one is told to be and being cruel because one wants to be. Valjean fiddles with his fork.

Does Pontmercy remember the name Éponine Thénardier, the girl that saved his life? Or has she slipped into oblivion? Has she, like so many other hungry girls with sparrow’s wings, faded from the mind of a boy who can afford to serve baskets and baskets of bread at his wedding?  
Valjean has lost his appetite.

“You are melancholy.”

Valjean startles. He had requested that Javert be seated next to him, and though M. Gillenormand balked at the idea of a lowly crow in such a place (_if only he knew_, Valjean thinks wryly), Cosette convinced the old man to do it.

Perhaps _convinced_ is not the right word. _Bullied_, more like. _Sweetly manipulated_. Valjean is not sure how he’s managed it, but he has raised quite a daughter.

“I am simply thinking,” he says, setting his champagne glass down, “that I do not belong here.”

“Nor do I.”

“Think of my life,” Valjean says softly. He picks up the bread basket. “And think of this. Jean from Faverolles would have killed to have this on his family’s table, and now… when I first sat down, I thought nothing of it.”

“You have come a long way,” Javert murmurs. “A very long way.”

Valjean looks down at his plate, still morose. He does not want to speak. He does not want to be here, joyous as the day is.

“I think I shall leave,” Javert says, at length. “I am a poor old man, and this is something for rich young people. It tires me.”

“M. Gillenormand is lively as ever, and the man is practically twice your age.”

“I said I was _poor_, Fauchelevent.” He gestures aimlessly with his fork, not bothering to keep his voice down. “That man has lived his entire life in the lap of luxury. Money is the fountain of youth.”

Valjean gives a chuckle. Javert smiles in response, grin sharp and white and cutting. Once, Valjean feared that grin. Now he enjoys it.

“Would you come home with me?” he asks suddenly, and Javert stares at him. Valjean feels his face warm.

“It is only that I will be alone tonight,” he mumbles, tripping over his words. “Cosette is married, of course, and Toussaint will be living with the Pontmercys from now on.” He looks into his glass. “I have… I have not been by myself since Montreuil-sur-Mer. I do not fancy it again.”

Javert is quiet for a long moment. At last he says, “I will leave with you if you are leaving soon. I am afraid I cannot stomach this for much longer.”

“I will say my goodbyes, and then we may go.”

Javert nods, and a great feeling of relief fills Valjean. Why, he cannot say.

He has very few people to bid goodbye to, just Cosette and Marius, the Gillenormands, and Touissant. His daughter and her beau are too lovestruck to pay much attention to him, but Valjean understands; when the Gillenormands brush him off after a few short words, he does not care much either. He has never truly enjoyed their company. Indeed, Touissant is the only goodbye tonight which he lingers on. The woman has been a good housekeeper, always fretting over Valjean and Cosette, and her absence will not go unnoticed.

Javert has already shrugged on his coat when Valjean returns, and is reaching for his hat. Valjean raises an eyebrow.

“So eager to leave?”

“I said I had never liked weddings.”

He does not ask after it, simply fetches his own coat and hat, and then the two of them step outside. A fleet of carriages are already waiting, so that drunken guests may arrive home safely after the festivities. Valjean is not drunk, and neither is Javert, but they take one anyway. It is late, and their ages combined total over one hundred.

The ride is quiet but for the sounds of hooves and the wheels clicking over the street. Valjean finds he does not mind. A question is forming in his head, and he would very much like to ask it, but he cannot until they are safe inside, away from curious ears.

At last, at last the carriage makes it to his home. He tips the driver generously, then follows Javert inside. The inspector has already hung up his coat by the time Valjean shuts the door, and is in the process of removing his boots.

“I will take the spare bedroom?”

Valjean nods, sliding his own coat from around his shoulders. He pauses.

There is no reason to delay asking. He hangs the coat up, then asks, “How long have you known?”

“How long have I known what?”

He takes a deep breath. “That you were… that you were inclined towards men.”

Javert does not respond. When Valjean turns to look at him, the man stands frozen, as though suddenly turned into a statue. Valjean lays a hand on his arm.

“Should I not have asked?”

“It’s fine,” Javert says gruffly. He rakes a hand through his hair. “I just… Perhaps we ought to sit down. I think this may be a long conversation.”

“The study,” Valjean suggests, and they make their way there.

Javert sits on the edge of the couch awkwardly, wings tucked over the edge. They brush the table there, and he turns to look. His eyes widen.

“You kept it?”

“Kept what?” Valjean asks, sitting beside him.

Javert holds up the handkerchief he had been embroidering so many months ago, its falcon wings still unfinished. With a start, Valjean realizes that they have not been alone together in the study since that night.

“Of course I kept it,” he says softly. “It was yours.”

Javert inspects it. “I had meant to give it to you as a Christmas present, but I…” he sighs. “I forgot all about it.” He sets the embroidery down on the table again. “So. Your question.”

“Yes.”

“How long I’ve known I’m inclined towards men.”

“_Oui_.”

Javert sighs, a cautious look in his eyes. Valjean has rarely seen the sort on the man’s face.

“A very long time,” Javert mutters finally. “Though I… I was not young when I realized. In Tou—when I was a guard, a great deal of my colleagues tried to convince me to try and find women with them, to have a night of fun, but I was never interested. At the time, I thought it was because I disliked the men I worked with.” He lifts his eyes to Valjean’s face. “Surely you remember them.”

He does. Most of the guards were cruel creatures, who took pleasure in beating the convicts for the slightest misstep. Valjean’s stomach turns at the memory.

He gives a short nod, and Javert continues.

“Well. I came to the Paris police, and when I was thirty-four, a man—” he falters. “A man transferred to the unit I worked in. A nightingale, with lovely brown wings and auburn hair that matched his feathers. His name was Henri. Henri Lafaille. He talked rarely, but he always treated me with respect. I didn’t have to earn it from him.” Javert laughs bitterly. “All my life, my wings and my skin have dragged me down, but Henri… he didn’t care.”

“You call him Henri,” Valjean says softly.

“So?”

“I have never heard you call anyone by their first name if you knew their surname.”

“Well,” Javert mumbles. “I never cared about anyone the way I cared about him.”

Suddenly it hits Valjean how little he knows about his friend. He knows what is essentially a sketch of Javert’s life: he was born in prison, and somehow made it to prison guard despite his wings and his heritage. Their time overlapped, but Valjean has no idea how long Javert spent at Toulon after he himself was paroled. Javert made it to Paris by the time he was thirty-four, and then Montreuil-sur-Mer. Five years there. And after that—

Valjean knows nothing until the barricades, except for the night at the Gorbeau house.

“There were rumors about him,” Javert says, voice quiet. “Why he was transferred, that he liked to spend nights at a tavern that—that only drew men, and certain types of men. When I realized what I felt for him was more than simply respect, I sought the place out. And I found him.”

Javert looks vulnerable in this light, more vulnerable than Valjean has ever seen him, including the days after the river. His hair has fallen from its careful queue, and his dark brows are creased not with anger, as they usually are, but with—

With something like sorrow.

Javert rakes a hand through his hair again. “He listened to me. The rumors were true, but I am… _different_ from the men that were in the tavern that night. They were all young, handsome sweet things, with soft voices and fair faces and limp wrists. Not a crow in the place. But Henri looked at me and heard me through to the end, and then he took me home for the night. And many nights after. After a few months, I began living with him to save myself the trouble.”

“How long did you have together?”

“Two years.” Javert fiddles with his hair ribbon. “God, those years. Nobody ever treated me like he did. Like I was the only one in the world. Once he told me he’d marry me if he could.” He smiles bitterly. “That’s why I hate weddings, you see. I’d been sick abed all day—I’d have gone to work if it was up to me, but he made me stay home. He sauntered in that night, arms full of pastries we couldn’t afford, just because I liked them, and planted himself on the bed and told me that someday—” Javert’s breath hitches. “Someday, he’d buy us fine suits and the most expensive bottle of wine he could afford, and find a priest who’d be willing to perform the ceremony for us, and we’d be married. Even if it was secret, even if we couldn’t tell anybody.”

Valjean reaches for Javert’s hand, lacing their fingers together. Javert glances at him.

“Keep going,” Valjean whispers.

“He used to call me his _corbeau chéri_,” Javert murmurs. His eyes are shut tight. “‘_Corbeau chéri,_ have you done the dishes?’_ ‘_I’m going out for a drink,_ corbeau chéri._ Care to join me?’ But one day his brother took he and me out to a tavern for Henri’s birthday, and Henri got so drunk he started trying to climb in my lap, kissing me.” He takes a shuddering gasp. “‘_Quel est le problème, mon corbeau chéri?_’, he was saying. ‘_Je t’aime, je t’aime_.’”

“No,” Valjean whispers.

Javert pinches his nose with his free hand. “We were banned from the tavern, and Henri was arrested for public indecency. He lost his job over it. And I… I had to apply for a transfer. Anywhere, just to get out of Paris. The other officers had always known, really. Some of them would call me Lafaille’s wife, but not often, and I didn’t care, but when Henri…” He pauses again. “It was proof. I tried to keep working, but it only took two weeks for me to apply to a transfer. Two days later, I was told I would be the inspector of some little northern town I’d never heard of. Montreuil-sur-Mer. I thought it would be on the sea.

“Henri wrote me almost once a week, at first. But then he told me that his family was trying to stop his letters, and in the next one he said they were arranging a marriage for him.” Javert’s voice is somber. “Were forbidding all contact with that ugly crow. His brother’s words, not Henri’s. We did not speak again.”

“Javert,” Valjean says softly. Javert glances at him.

“What?”

“I’m sorry.”

Javert shrugs. “Did you convince Henri to drink two and a half bottles of whiskey all by himself? No. Did you tell me I was more fitting of the title Madame Lafaille, not Inspector Javert, and leave obscene drawings at my desk? No. It was not your fault, so you needn’t apologize.”

“We have been over this issue before.”

“Valjean—”

Valjean squeezes his hand. “It is a common courtesy. I will say sorry as often as I like, do you understand?”

“You are sounding like Henri very much right now,” Javert muses. “We often had this conversation.”

“It is a necessary conversation with you.”

A smile tugs at Javert’s lips. It is not sharp, like his usual ones; not wry like the smiles he wears when he laughs. It is a very soft smile, the sort Valjean has not had the privilege to see often.

“Someday,” Valjean whispers, shutting his eyes, “men like us will be allowed to marry each other, I am certain of it. They will be able to hold hands and kiss in the street without fear, and we will smile down at them from Heaven and be glad that even if we could not, they can. They will be allowed to love.”

“Men like us,” Javert says softly. Valjean opens his eyes.

“Yes.”

“Men like us,” the man repeats. Valjean leans forward, pressing their foreheads together, and Javert cups a hand around the back of his neck.

“Henri is still in my mind,” Javert says, quiet. “I fear I may need some time to myself tonight. But in the morning, if you wish…”

Valjean pushes a lock behind Javert’s ear. “You may kiss me all you like.” He pauses. “And I know you will likely prefer the spare room, but if you wish, I would not mind you in mine.”

“_Merci. Merci_, Jean.” Javert licks his lips. “May I call you Jean?”

“Please.”

Valjean is the first of them to retire to bed, leaving Javert lost in thought in the study. He is just about to drift off when the door opens and the bed creaks, a weight settling onto the mattress beside him. Javert throws his arm around Valjean’s waist, pulls him close, and tucks Valjean’s head beneath his chin.

They fit together perfectly. Valjean smiles contentedly, then succumbs to sleep.

In the morning, they lie abed for far longer than is their usual fashion—at least, far longer than is Valjean’s usual fashion, and he suspects Javert wakes early as well. But today they are content to simply lie beside each other, hands clasped and eyes closed, though they are awake.

“Would you kiss me?” Valjean asks at last, and Javert leans forward to press their mouths together.

It is clumsy, at least on Valjean’s part, and their mouths are sour with sleep. But _Javert_ is _kissing_ him, and there is nowhere else he would rather be.

“Jean,” Javert breathes against his lips. Valjean has never heard him so content.

He brings an arm up around Javert’s side, stroking the man’s wings lightly. Javert shudders a sigh.

“Might I—” Javert pauses, inhaling. “Might I touch your wings?”

“You might,” Valjean says, and sits up.

He finds his is holding his breath. No one has touched his wings but himself, not ever, not even dear Fauchelevent. He does not know how it will feel.

It feels like nothing he has ever felt before.

Valjean cannot help but sigh, cannot help but relax his muscles and close his eyes as Javert’s hand runs over his feathers. The touch is gentle and hesitant, but even so, it is one of the most satisfying things he has ever felt.

He could not begin to describe it if he tried. _It feels like he is stroking comfort into me. Itmakes me feel the way I felt when he held me._

“Is this all right?” Javert says, sounding nervous. He has never sounded nervous before.

“It is wonderful.”

“Good.”

They are quiet for a long time. At last Valjean turns around again, crossing his legs. “Would you put your head in my lap?”

Javert obeys without question, wings fluttering as he lays his head on Valjean’s thigh. His eyes are shut. He looks best like this—hair undone, shirt gaping to show his chest and a contented smile spread across his face.

He does not look fearsome. He does not scowl or growl or hiss. He does not look like an inspector who makes fiends throw down their weapons and surrender simply by stepping into the room.

He is just an old crow, laying his head in a falcon’s lap as the morning light streaks through the window.

“Someday,” Valjean says softly, “I will find Henri for you.”

Javert opens his eyes. “Why?”

“Because you miss him. Because you were not allowed to love him,” Valjean whispers. He leans down to press a kiss to Javert’s brow.

“I do not love him anymore,” Javert muses. “He would be naught but a friend.”

“You need a friend.”

“I have you.”

Valjean smiles softly. “You need more than one friend, _mon cher_.”

“Mm.”

“And do you know what else I will do?”

Javert shifts, looking up at him. “What else will you do?” he asks, taking Valjean’s hand and kissing his knuckles. Valjean smoothes the man’s hair back.

“I will teach you to fly.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for all the comments & support through this fic! I've had a very busy last week & a half, so I haven't had time to reply to the most recent comments, but I'll try to soon. thanks for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> this is the first long work i've done in a while but there's only 5 chapters so hopefully i'll stay on top of posting... i plan to post each chapter about once a week or thereabouts


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